‘Drinking Gasoline’ was released in 1985, consisting of four songs from the legendary ‘Gasoline In Your Eye’ videocassette. These songs rank among Cabaret Voltaire’s more infectious compositions.

‘Gasoline In Your Eye’ is now included as a DVD together with both the CD and the LP of ‘Drinking Gasoline’, featuring videos shot and edited by groundbreaking director Peter Care and Richard H Kirk.

All audio remastered from the original tapes.

Vinyl cut by Stefan Betke aka Pole.

‘Gasoline In Your Eye’ DVD includes ‘Sensoria’ and promotional videos for ‘I Want You’ and ‘Just Fascination’.

Cabaret Voltaire, alongside Human League, Throbbing Gristle, Fad Gadget and The Normal, were at the forefront of the UK electronic movement of the late 1970s. Way ahead of their time, Cabaret Voltaire’s blend of dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental made them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts of the last 35 years.

‘Micro-Phonies’ is the sixth full-length studio album by Cabaret Voltaire. Released in 1984, it is considered the group’s most mainstream release, with the singles ‘Sensoria’ and ‘James Brown’ gaining popularity, especially due to the music video finding MTV airplay.

Cabaret Voltaire, alongside Human League, Throbbing Gristle, Fad Gadget and The Normal, were at the forefront of the UK electronic movement of the late 70s.

Way ahead of their time, Cabaret Voltaire’s blend of dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental made them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts of the last 35 years.

All audio remastered from the original tapes.

Vinyl cut by Stefan Betke aka Pole.

Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Micro-Phonies’, as originally remastered in 2013, now reissued on Turquoise vinyl. ‘Micro-Phonies’ is Cabaret Voltaire’s most sleek dance record, featuring charting singles ‘James Brown’ and ‘Sensoria’. Released in 1984, the record gained its reputation as the Cabs’ most mainstream album. Their partnership with Peter Care on video for ‘Sensoria’ received major airplay from MTV, and was famously one of the first music videos to be in the New York Museum of Art.

Cabaret Voltaire were very much ahead of their time, harmonising dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental electronics, making them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts in electronic music.

“Having invented the shadowy, murkier side of industrial/noise experimentation, here Cabaret Voltaire make their equally justified claim at fully kickstarting the beat-heavy crunch…” - All Music
“Cab Vol focus on rhythms and bass lines (“James Brown”), work with breakbeats (“Blue Heat”) and approach the mainstream with "Sensoria". - Musikexpress

TRACK LISTING

1 Do Right
2 The Operative
3 Digital Rasta
4 Spies In The Wires
5 Theme From Earthshaker
1 James Brown
2 Slammer
3 Blue Heat
4 Sensoria

Shadow of Fear is Cabaret Voltaire’s first studio album in 26 years. Richard H. Kirk is the sole remaining member; he’s released many acclaimed solo albums, having invented bleep techno via his groundbreaking work in Sweet Exorcist. Kirk has formed this new album from a series of pulverising live shows. The tone and personality of CV is ingrained in its core as it dances across techno, dub, house, 1970s Germany and general esoteric explorations coupled with mangled vocal samples.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: As important a document as anything they've done, 'Shadow Of Fear' is a swimming electronic odyssey, split between hypnotic industrial percussion and slowly evolving synth arps, bringing the churning driven thump we know so well, as well as a more playful, danceable backbone. Superb.

TRACK LISTING

1 Be Free
2 The Power (Of Their Knowledge)
3 Night Of The Jackal
4 Microscopic Flesh Fragment
5 Papa Nine Zero Delta United
6 Universal Energy
7 Vasto
8 What’s Goin’ On

This is Cabaret Voltaire’s seventh studio album, originally released in 1985. The album peaked at #57 in the UK charts. ‘I Want You’ went on to be the single.

Cabaret Voltaire, alongside Human League, Throbbing Gristle, Fad Gadget and The Normal, were at the forefront of the UK electronic movement of the late 70s.

Way ahead of their time, Cabaret Voltaire’s blend of dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental made them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts of the last 35 years.

All audio remastered from the original tapes.

Vinyl cut by Stefan Betke aka Pole.

TRACK LISTING

L21ST
I Want You
Hells Home
Kickback
The Arm Of The Lord
Warm
Golden Halos
Motion Rotation
Whip Blow
The Web

Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of The Lord’, as originally remastered in 2013, now reissued on White vinyl. Known for being the harder, more experimental album of their “Pop” period, ‘The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of The Lord’ was originally released in 1985 and includes the classic ‘I Want You’. The album embodys Cabarets Voltaire’s industrial electro-funk sound and their punk ethos, lending its title to American political extremism.

Cabaret Voltaire were very much ahead of their time, harmonising dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental electronics, making them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts in electronic music.

“…The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord is an exercise in paranoia with anxiety coded into the jittery sample-heavy structures of the music itself.” - Spectrum Culture
“It's a pacier, funkier album than the 1984 effort, but it also it more abrasive and strange and holds together better…” - The Quietus

TRACK LISTING

A1 L21ST
A2 I Want You
A3 Hells Home
A4 Kickback
A5 The Arm Of The Lord
B1 Warm
B2 Golden Halos
B3 Motion Rotation
B4 Whip Blow
B5 The Web

‘The Crackdown’ is the fourth studio album by Cabaret Voltaire. It was released in 1983.

This is Cabaret Voltaire’s first album after Chris Watson’s departure.

“One of Cabaret Voltaire’s strongest albums, ‘The Crackdown’ features the band working a number of menacing electronic textures into a basic dance / funk rhythm; the result is one of their most distinctive, challenging records.” - AllMusic

Way ahead of their time, Cabaret Voltaire’s blend of dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental made them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts of the last 35 years.

All audio remastered from the original tapes.

Vinyl cut by Stefan Betke aka Pole.

Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘The Crackdown’, as originally remastered in 2013, now reissued on Grey vinyl. Initially released in 1983, ‘The Crackdown’ was the band’s fourth album, and first after the exit of founding member Chris Watson. The album fuses their earlier experimental records with the electronic dance-funk sound that would become more prominent within their subsequent releases and includes the magnificent haunting single ‘Just Fascination’.

The significance of ‘The Crackdown’ has grown over the decades, also enlisted in NME’s best albums of 1983.

Cabaret Voltaire were very much ahead of their time, harmonising dance music, techno, dub, house and experimental electronics, making them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts in electronic music.

“…true, unflinching pioneers of electronic music” – Loud & Quiet
“…The Crackdown alone will serve to change some opinions of the Cabs' tenure in the majors.” - The Quietus
“One of Cabaret Voltaire's strongest albums…” - All Music

TRACK LISTING

A1 24-24
A2 In The Shadows
A3 Talking Time
A4 Animation
B1 Over And Over
B2 Just Fascination
B3 Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself)
B4 Haiti
B5 Crackdown

Cable Ties are a fierce, tense rock’n’roll trio. They take the three-minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point to deliver smouldering feminist anthems. Post-punk and garage rock hammered together by a relentless rhythmic pulse. Jenny McKechnie channels her struggles into songs that resonate deeply, giving voice to feelings often buried in modern life.

Shauna Boyle and Nick Brown are a rhythm section anchored in Stooges primitivism, relentlessly hammering out a bedrock for McKechnie’s guitar pyrotechnics and vocal wallop. Three friends summoning a rhythmic tide to deliver anthems that turn latent anxieties into a rallying cry. The band has been committed to an inclusive feminist and political outlook since its inception in 2015, exploring issues of gendered violence, colonialism, and sexual assault. The band members have been involved in benefit shows, organized DIY festivals, and volunteer with Girls Rock!, a not-for-profit organization that aims to empower female, trans, and gender non-binary youth in music.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A

1 Hope
2 Tell Them Where To Go
3 Sandcastles
4 Lani

SIDE B

5 Not My Story
6 Self-Made Man
7 Anger’s Not Enough
8 Pillow

All Her Plans, the third album from Melbourne, Australia’s Cable Ties, finds the trio of Jenny McKechnie, Shauna Boyle, and Nick Brown at their punchiest and most assured. The ferocious, kraut-influenced blend of post-punk and garage rock of Merge debut Far Enough remains, but McKechnie’s lyrics invite the listener closer than ever before.

The urgency and fury that have marked Cable Ties’ output thus far is more nuanced on All Her Plans. The unfettered rage of their calls to action endures tackling subjects like broken mental healthcare systems and the burden of familial care that is largely placed on women while holding space for gratitude, love, and acceptance.

All Her Plans is a breakthrough moment for Cable Ties. It is the sound of a group that is exhilarated to be making music together again, both a celebration of their resilience and a massive step forward into a future they can finally claim as their own.

Cable Ties have toured Europe three times, supporting Tropical Fuck Storm, Amyl and the Sniffers & OFF!

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Crashing Through
2. Perfect Client
3. Time For You
4. Too Late
5. Mum’s Caravan
Side B:
6. Thoughts Back
7. Silos
8. Change
9. Deep Breath Out

Influenced by the NYC and DC hardcore bands they grew up with, Cable Car Theory have created their own distinct take on good, aggressive, melodic music. The music that appears on "The Deconstruction" is at times brutal, at times earnest, both engaging and challenging to the listener. This is another quality release from Defiance.

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, prolific producer Cabu has come a long way; from his successful remix work – from Joe Hurtz's "Stay Lost" edit to Big Wild's "Empty Room" flip – to his consistently catchy original productions, Cabu's only getting started. He keeps this momentum alive with the EP "So Far To Go", his first to be released by Ta-ku & Jakarta Records' sublabel 823 Records.

823 is a perfect place for Cabu's bouncy, hypnotic grooves and is a return to form for what "Cabu" represents: a driving force in the pursuit of happiness through sound. It's a well-timed collaboration, as Cabu's fanbase has continuously grown over the past few years through features on Australia's Triple J, DJ Complexion's Future Beats Radio, Soundistyle, The South East Grind, Mutual Friends, ThisSongIsSick, Majestic Casual, Soulection Radio, BBC 1xtra, Pilerats, Maison Kitsune and more. To that end, "So Far To Go" features some of the most talented artists to come out of the Pacific continent, such as Milan Ring (95K monthly Spotify listeners) – coined "Australia's R&B Princess" by Apple Music – Brisbane native hit-maker Young Franco (1M+ monthly Spotify listeners), Kamaliza (123K monthly Spotify listeners), NOÉ, Gabby Nacua, Pastel and of course label-head Ta-ku himself.

1st single, "Process" featuring Ta-ku & Milan Ring was released on November 3rd. Hypnotically bouncy, with heavenly synth pads, crisp percussive elements combined with the ethereal voices of Ta-ku and Milan harmonically push the sonic envelope to make this track an infallible groovy knockout. As Cabu says, "Process" is "the dream-like state in which you take gratitude in your current situation whilst being hopeful in the future." The track provides a perfect taste of these artistic and creative powerhouses. The stunningly beautiful music video – directed by Sydney based Redscope Films and premiered on The Sound You Need – is the perfect accompaniment.

2nd single, "Sun & Moon" featuring Young Franco & NOÉ is set to be released on December 10th along with an announcement of the EP and pre-order. The song is a contagiously bouncy bop, with the different vocal harmonies and synth chords giving the track an almost prime 00's throwback, it's the perfect year-end anthem to keep dancing and growing through the good and bad.

The album's focus track, "About U" featuring Kamaliza will be released along with the EP release on January 28th, 2022. The song perfectly blends electronic elements within an R&B / Soul aesthetic, and is all about moving forward with intention, from the lyrics to the groove, making you feel tipsy on life.

All singles off the EP will be accompanied with custom visualizers by Perth-based design / creative firm Gesture Systems. The album's single-releases and videos will be promoted in-house via the artist's and the label's social media channels in Germany and Australia.

The 823 label represents the appreciation for the people, ideas and places that inspire and push their protagonists forward. "823 celebrates the simple beauty of everyday life and the people in it that inspire us." (Regan Matthews aka Ta-ku)

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: I've been waiting patiently for this one, smooth R&B sound with high energy which hits just the right spot. Exciting things coming from Sydney, this is one to watch closely for sure.

TRACK LISTING

1. Reintroduction
2. About U (feat. Kamaliza)
3. Over Me (feat. Gabby Nacua)
4. Interlude (feat. Pastel)
5. Sun Moon (feat. Young Franco & NOE)
6. Process (feat. Milan Ring & Ta-Ku)
7. Falling In

Great melancholic Americana from the ex Green On Red / Giant Sand man. Dark, sparse tales of pain, loneliness, regret and loss.

Cadillac Blindside, on a first listen may resemble an early Get Up Kids when they were rocking and less heart broken and this new six song EP is full of good songs delivered with an energy and assurance that leaves you a-raving!

Clay Pipe welcomes Cate Brooks back to the label this time under her Café Kaput’ moniker. This is an album about language. Sailing as an activity has a language of its’ own. A dialect, a feeling. There is the language of nomenclature; the technical and descriptive terms used on board, along with the visual signs and codes of the discipline.

Exploring somewhat deeper, there is also the undeniable mystique that has surrounded the language of the shipping forecast since it captured the imagination of the public upon its’ inception. Amongst the deepest leagues, there is a third language; something very ephemeral and non- verbal. The way the concept of sailing makes us feel; what it means to us personally. Looking out to the middle distance, watching a lone boat on a calm sea- what goes through your mind? This album explores those emotions and offers a few possible answers. Cate Brooks, 2022. 01. Waves & Knots 02.Sea Kites 03. Easterly Four or Five 04. Tug Boat 05. Light Vessel Automatic 06.Inshore Waters 07. Mid December 08. A Surface Like Glass 09. Maritime

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A beautiful, slow-motion distillation of ambient textures and hazy melodic synth lines, recalling Cate's work as The Advisory Circle but with a renewed focus on instrumental interplay and evocative aquatic phrases. Another absolutely killer outing for Clay Pipe too, a perfect fit.

Neon Pill is the highly anticipated new album from Cage The Elephant, and group’s first new music since their album, Social Cues, which won Best Rock album at the 2019 GRAMMY Awards. Cage The Elephant consists of brothers Matt Shultz (vocals) and Brad Shultz (rhythm guitar) along with Daniel Tichenor (bass), Jared Champion (drums), Nick Bockrath (lead guitar) and Matthan Minster (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals).

On their fifth album, UK based, Kentucky band Cage The Elephant have taken their garage rock roots and thrown in a heavy dose of Bowie-esque glam as they deal with the double header of classic rock’n’roll subject matter: the price of fame and heartbreak.

Caged Animals is Vincent Cacchione, a New Jersey-born Italian living in Brooklyn. Known previously for the nearly noir folk-rock of his former band, Soft Black, Cacchione carries a strong songwriting gene in his Caged Animals brand of glitch-friendly pop - as inspired by the classicism of Jeff Magnum or John Lennon's solo material, as the melancholic R&B twist of James Blake or Frank Ocean, or the perfect fusion of Chad Van Gaalen's raw & pop qualities.

In The Land Of Giants is a record about family, faith and hope and its’ recording became an opportunity to do everything that Cacchione does best in one audio space - marrying the sonic experimentation of his love for electronica with the undeniable penchant for lyrical and emotional resonance he developed in Soft Black, a band he formed with (Zachary) Cole Smith of DIIV.

This is an intimate yet grand Pop record from an artist that is not afraid of stirring emotions amidst a mountain of melody, and certainly not afraid to risk being seen as uncool in order to deliver something genuine. Cacchione himself states “This is the most spiritual record I've made. It necessitated a huge shift in my worldview and a concentrated effort to distill all of my strengths into a focused idea. For me, this album was about making something emotional, direct and human within the context of computer-made, electronic music. My previous recordings dealt heavily with some serious issues from my past. On 'In The Land Of Giants', I'm seeing the clouds part and trying to describe the beauty of my first view of the sky". How cool is that?

TRACK LISTING

1. Too Much Dark
2. Stop Hurting Each Other
3. Cindy + Me
4. The Sound Of Thunder
5. U + Yr Rocketship
6. The Mute + The Mindreader
7. Tiny Sounds
8. We're Playing With Fire
9. A Psychic Lasso
10. In The Land Of Giants
11. (you're A Giant Now)
12. What You're Looking For

'I believe the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.' - John Cage 1937. Although John Cage occasionally worked in large, sophisticated studios - for example, when he composed Fontana Mix in 1958 - his approach to electronic and tape music was often uncomplicated, makeshift, and pragmatic, employing simple tabletop devices: tape machines, phonograph cartridges, contact microphones, record players, portable radios, etc. He developed a soundworld that was utterly new, radical and demanding. It heralded the age of the loudspeaker, mass communication and Marshall McLuhan's 'global village.' The hiss, crackle and hum of electronic circuits, and the disembodied sounds, snatched by radio from the ether, spoke of the 20th century.

Langham Research Centre works within the tradition firmly established by Cage, using resources that would have been available to him. For the realisation of Cartridge Music, moving iron phonograph pickups were sourced and restored. These have a knurled screw designed to hold a steel phonograph needle and, in the piece, other objects are inserted and amplified: pieces of wire, toothpicks, paperclips, etc. The realisation of Fontana Mix includes the individual mono tracks from Cage's original tapes created in 1958. These are played using open-reel tape machines. These practices ensure we work within the limitations that Cage experienced and enable us to get close to the soundworld he inhabited. (Robert Worby, LRC).

TRACK LISTING

CD:
01 Fontana Mix With Aria 1958 / 13'36
02 Imaginary Landscape N°.5 1952 / 3'00
03 WBAI 1960 / 7'00
04 Cartridge Music 1960 / 10'00
05 0'00'' 1962 / 2'36
06 Variations I 1960 / 10'00 Tracklisting LP

VINYL:
SIDE A
01 Fontana Mix With Aria 1958 / 13'36
02 Imaginary Landscape N°.5 1952 / 3'00
03 WBAI 1960 / 7'00

SIDE B
01 Cartridge Music 1960 / 10'00
02 0'00'' 1962 / 2'36
03 Variations I 1960 / 10'00

Cagework is a new project fronted by Sam Bedford. A three-piece formed in South-West England, they draw inspiration from odd lo-fi indie, post-hardcore, early emo and smatterings of avant-garde folk. The band have been together less than a year, playing shows in South London and beyond, releasing one single. And now... Coming in at 16 minutes, the self-titled debut album is as direct as it is vibrant. Dissonant, atonal, yet somehow hook-driven, its confidence and self-assuredness demonstrative of a band long into the game, not a group only beginning so recently. As Bedford explains, “It seems strange to want to draw a line under such a short period of time, considering we’ve been a band for less than a year,” says Bedford. “But we were looking ahead and really wanted to have these songs documented, with so many more being written all the time.” Cagework were spotted by Justin Lockey (Mastersystem / Minor Victories) who was immediately keen to produce and release the album on Physical Education, a label he co-runs.

Evidently, the production on the album has been left as abrasive and raw as Bedford intended: all big drums and Albini influenced discord. Cagework released first single Simmer in April 2018, receiving praise and support from the likes of So Young, Clash and Rough Trade, with repeated spins from Huw Stephens, Gideon Coe and Amy Lamé. But what about since then? “We played through the initial excitement around the release of Simmer, which was really encouraging,” says Bedford. This period included some touring and some support slots alongside The Districts, Yuck and Hembree. The album was intended to be a self-release in early 2019, but through fate and good fortune, the home recordings found their way to Physical Education Recordings. The band travelled up to Phys Ed founder Justin Lockey’s South Yorkshire studio. Just before the session, the band threw a wildcard down; Wilson – a track which was to become the first single from the record. “That song is about someone who is lonely, isolated and how it’s probably because of their values, or certainly how stubbornly they’re sticking to those values,” Bedford says. “It’s about accepting that sometimes you need to change how you think about yourself and recognise when the choices you’re making are making you unhappy.” This album reflects the familiar, pervasive malaise of 2018 and, by the looks of things, 2019. It also responds with a message on the need to reflect, a process the band have spent enough time on to be a relative authority on the issue. Another theme of the record is boredom and how people respond to it, particularly in a time where there are infinite distractions.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wilson
2. Eileen
3. 23
4. Listen Elsewhere
5. Modesty
6. Trust
7. Valuables

Lucien Caine is a singer, songwriter and composer based in Manchester. His songs are dark, lustful, haunting and cinematic and his music is already being compared to artists such as Serge Gainsbourg, John Barry and Elliott Smith. EP1 is the first of four EPs to be released over the next 12 months. It begins with "The Only Man That Matters" mixed by Andy Green who has produced albums for Keane and KT Tunstall. Then the intricate string arrangements and haunting vocals of "Advice From Strangers" a downtempo gem. "Black Widow", track three, is a pounding, noirish elegy of seduction and murder, and the EP closes with the "Those Days Are Gone". 'I wanted to create and develop a sound and a mood... I like it to sound dark and romantic. I want the songs to flirt with the listener, and then deliver!' Lucien Caine

Lucien Caine is a singer, songwriter and composer based in Manchester. NOW STOP, have no preconceptions do not picture Badly Drawn Boy do not imagine another Stephen Fretwell, get acoustic troubadour out of your head. Lucien Caine is none of the above! His sound is more John Barry than Nick Drake. His songs of love, obsession and excess are more Leonard Cohen than Bob Dylan. The attitude is all Scott Walker and Serge Gainsbourg transported from the sixties to now. In the summer of 2008 a plan was hatched to release four EP's; EP1, EP2, EP3, EP4 in 12 months to showcase Luciens songs. EP2 continues where the first left off. The first track (again mixed by Andy Green producer of Keane, KT Tunstall, to name but a few) is the lushly romantic "The Beat That My Heart Skipped", imagine driving along the winding coastal roads of the French Riviera in a vintage Italian sports car with the top down, this is the soundtrack that would be playing in your head. The second track is the very dark and lustful "Internal Affairs". "Let Us Be The Rumour" is a beautifully crafted and intense lament on a private relationship that becomes public. And finally "She Loves To Lose" a gorgeous seductive and intense duet sang with the Icelandic chanteuse Heidrun Bjornsdottir (formerly of GusGus and Gloss).

Marti Caine's infamous Point Of View is a groovy blend of slow-mo funk, dark disco and precise pop. Originally released on BBC Records in 1981, it has attracted a considerable cult following this century. The odd charity shop score aside, it has been impossible to find a copy for less than eye-watering sums (often selling for over £200) and, as such, it's an honour to present the first officially licensed vinyl reissue of this sublime record. Featuring expert liner notes written by Bill Brewster - perhaps the record's most notable champion - this lovingly curated release is limited to just 500 copies.

Marti Caine was a popular UK TV entertainer in the late 1970s onwards and Point Of View presented her with an opportunity to proceed in a hip direction by working with British R&B heavyweight Barry Blue. His legendary reputation was secured with a string of great records, among them the first three Heatwave albums, the Balearic hit "Afro Dizzi Act" by Cry Cisco and the cult smash "Breakin' In" by Javaroo. However, despite the array of talent working on the album, Point Of View sank without trace at the time. It's something that Blue attributes to the bizarre way BBC Records worked, and he entertainingly expands upon this within the liner notes.

Musically, the highlights are many and memorable. Its most notorious track is the sublime soul stepper "Love The Way You Love Me", the reason most people covet this album so profoundly. However, from the dark dubby disco of "Snowbird City" to the moody ballad "Love Is Running Through Me", the lesser heralded tracks are nothing short of exquisite. Indeed, the chugging elegance of sleazy disco opener "Can I Speak To The World Please?" showcases a string-drenched strutting-funk that would've been enviable the world over. It's that good.

The outlandish artwork - presenting a striking, green-eyed Marti treating a tiger to a headlock - has been faithfully restored and is arguably worth the price of admission alone. With access to the original tape transfers, Simon Francis' sensitive mastering elevates the sound throughout and, as ever, it has been pressed at a reassuringly weighty 180g. Sadly, Marti died of lymphatic cancer at the tragically early age of 50 in 1995, so is not here to experience what we hope will be a long overdue reappraisal of the hitherto underheard genius of Marti Caine, the singer.

STAFF COMMENTS

Millie says: Marti Caine slaying it with this groovy disco and funk-filled reissue of Point of View. Featuring the legendary track ‘Love The Way You Love Me’ which is an anthem in itself. This Be With release is super limited so don’t hesitate.

TRACK LISTING

1 Can I Speak To The World Please?
2 I'll Never See You Again
3 Bitch Is Love
4 Love Is Running Through Me
5 Who
6 Love The Way You Love Me
7 You Pick Me Up (And Put Me Down)
8 Snowbird City
9 Tin Heart And The Rebel
10 Too Much Between Us 

Known for crafting infectious rhythms infused with an otherworldly strangeness, UK-based producer CAIN makes his debut on Darker Than Wax with Sarissa - a seven tracker driven by his signature percussive style. Written in his native highlands of Scotland and heavily influenced by the mountainous landscapes, Sarissa seeks to fuse together organic and synthetic sounds in unusual ways. True to his ethos of joining the dots between folk music from cultures around the world, the melodies and rhythms explored throughout are tied together by their timeless, ethereal quality.

Interlocking rhythms lead the way as the skeleton in this music with cinematic harmonies woven in and out, leading the listener through dark valleys and emotional peaks. Each tune tells its own story and has a distinct feel from the next – from the jilting rhythms and hazy rave feel of ‘Sarissa’, the crawling basslines of ‘Gecko’, and the ethereal lightness of ‘Marwa’ to the harmonic weight of Kuro. The seven cuts making up Sarissa are equally effective as dancefloor weapons, or as accompaniments on long foggy walks.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Gecko
A2. Sarissa
A3. Marwa
A4. Juba
B1. Argon
B2. Kuro
B3. Tyre

Playing with other artists over the years, Emmett Kelly has exhibited an encompassing approach to music which lends flexibility to The Cairo Gang’s song-style. He’s a harmony singer of supreme skill, bringing not only a sweet and supple voice but also a tremendous sympathy to the singing of it (as anyone who’s caught Cairo onstage with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy will ever know). Now a couple of albums and tapes and singles and things into it he’s making streamlined music for the ears, constructing with a heavy hand in order to have a heavy impact with more than just sounds but songs and beaming them in on bright bolts of sunshine.

‘Gone Missing’ isn’t just an awesome, awesome-sounding record of guitar pop that rocks, of songs sweetly hung with candified hooks; also it’s a new report from the side of the road. The Cairo Gang have made tracks and travelled distances from their former states of mind, their former hooded selves.

The Cairo Gang have found themselves - their most perfect alignment to date, taking a more intuitive path to the song, letting go of the sense of design, letting it write itself, as it will in the right hands.

‘Gone Missing’ was written in between places, on the run, recorded in a variety of rooms. Lines appear to have been straightened - yet still, blood beats sidewise inside Cairo’s temples, their rebel heart is drunk on the outskirts of town. The impulse to dig underneath the bittersweet heart, to invert meaning, shapes the songs of ‘Goes Missing’.

TRACK LISTING

An Angel, A Wizard
Be What You Are
Swiper
She Don’t Want You
Chains
Gangsters Holding Hands
A Heart Like Yours
Some Other Time
Ice Fishing
The Open Sky
So What? Who Cares?

Global pointing Brazilian jazz trio releases their new album Agôra, that sparkles with electric funk and Herbie-esque eclecticism. It features a myriad of guest vocalists and musicians including Brazilians Xênia França and Zé Leônidas, Jembaa Groove's Ghanaian singer Eric Owusu and South African artists Bongani Givethanks & Mpho Nkuzo

Re-wiring the concept of 'fusion' for 2023, Agôra is Brazilian trio Caixa Cubo's resurgent new record with the title referring to 'now', based upon the intuitive and fluid nature of the trio's method, and this inspired recording. With shoots to black music culture, from Brazil to Brooklyn, Ghana and South Africa, Agôra is the group's ninth album yet is their first where they've invited guests, mainly singers, onto each track and follows their last, Angela from 2020, released on Heavenly Records, which won a BBC 6 Music Album of the Year (Huey Morgan's selection) granting them much deserved international recognition.

The core musical elements of Caixa Cubo are Henrique Gomide (keys), João Fideles (drums) and Noa Stroeter (bass), all from São Paulo, Brazil and where they met as teenagers and would continue their friendship and musical bond at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Now all in their mid thirties, João and Noa live back in the city where it all started but Henrique has settled in Cologne, Germany where the recording of Agôra took place, over the course of 3 days, at the home cum studio of Chris 'Dusty' Doepke, their friend and owner of the label they signed to, Jazz & Milk.

In line with all their creations where flow and energy provide the magic, allowing what the moment provides, the album shines not only for its virtuosity but for its minimalism, the depth of space, and for the first time, the ability to figure in and outside of the jazz fold, as the trio decided, for the first time, to bring in singers and add a new aesthetic to their sound.

"Agôra is a wake-up call to reality, a reminder that the infinite possibilities of technological progress should not disconnect us from the earth, from eye-to-eye relationships, and from moments lived in person" the band are keen to point out. "And that we must not be consumed by greed, for all we truly possess.... is the NOW."

Turning hope and metaphor into music, the debut single Sábado, an electrified future- jazz-fizz reflects perfectly the spontaneity that permeated the entire recording of the album. "When we got to the studio, we had no idea what we were going to record. We started playing a groove, kind of inspired by Gilberto Gil's 80s albums, and our drummer João started singing this funny song 'Sábado Barrigudão' (Big Belly Saturday) alongside the bass groove and that was that". Inspired by their city of birth, São Paulo, it features long time collaborator and vocalist Zé Leônidas, with cuicas, tamborim, agogo and shakers providing the most obvious Brazilian affect from the album.

Dreams is the band's first foray into R'n'B melding the group's simple and sporadic instrumentation of drums, keys and bass into a Jill Scott inspired song that could have been born in Brooklyn yet sung by Brazilian singer and Grammy nominated Xênia França and Zé Leônidas in both English and Portuguese. Xênia recently performed online for hip-to-it website Colors and it's her latest collaboration with Caixa Cubo, having first met in 2009 for a series of live performances.

South African artists Bongani Givethanks & Mpho Nkuzo come to the record with a wholly different approach on Ndiyakhangela, providing spoken word and vocal refrains on top of an Afro-Brazilian percussion jam with a delivery and verse in Xhosa, Zula and Ndebele. Asase is the album opener and features vocals of Eric Owusu who is part of highlife pioneer Pat Thomas's live band and most recently, co-leader of Jembaa Groove, an Afro-soul band from Berlin. It's a synth wig out with djembe grooves and offers a brand new take on Afro-soul-jazz.

Other contributions come from Cologne based jazz singer Rebekka Ziegler (Oblique Sunshine), São Paulo based guitarist Eduardo Camargo (Caio & Eric) and trumpet player Matthias Schriefl on Kismeti, a gorgeous and rolling number that ebbs and flows, exemplifying the group's effortless ability to craft a sound energised by a belief in one-self and the idea of having faith without the need to look at each other for verification.

As drummer and percussionist João Fideles perfectly surmised upon arriving for the recording session, "What drums do you have? Whatever you have, I'll use it". Agôra is testament to nearly 20 years of camaraderie, friendship and most importantly, trust.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dreams (feat. Xênia França & Zé Leônidas)
2. Kismeti (feat. Matthias Schriefl)
3. Asase (feat. Eric Owusu)
4. Sábado (feat. Zé Leônidas)
5. Carrossel (feat. Zé Leônidas)
6. Caio & Eric (feat. Eduardo Camargo)
7. Ndiyakhangela (feat. Bongani Givethanks & Mpho Nkuzo)
8. Agôra (feat. Matthias Schriefl)
9. Oblique Sunshine (feat. Rebekka Ziegler)

One of the most highly-regarded modern Brazilian jazz trios, Caixa Cubo have announced details of the release of Angela, their latest album, and first to be licensed for European release by Heavenly Recordings.

Recorded in December 2018, the album features the singer Zé Leônidas on Palavras, and includes arrangements of songs like Baião Malandro by Egberto Gismonti and Dark Prince by Geri Allen, in addition to the group's original compositions.

Made up of Henrique Gomide (keys), João Fideles (drums) and Noa Stroeter (bass) the trio have split their time between Brazil and Europe in recent years, having been awarded scholarships to study at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Netherlands.

They have performed at many respected European venues and festivals including Jazz à Vienne Festival (France), Anton Philip Hall (The Hague), A-Trane (Berlin), Riverboat Festival (Denmark) and others in Paris, Brussels, London, Birmingham, Lisbon, Rotterdam. They also performed in Maputo, Mozambique, as well as renowned venues in Brazil, mainly in Sao Paulo (Auditório Ibirapuera, SESC Consolação, Museu da Casa Brasileira).

Talking about Caixa Cubo and the album, the British DJ, broadcaster, producer, writer and jazz lover, Patrick Forge said:

It used to be the case that young Brazilians were either oblivious to or disdainful of their musical heritage, such was the omnipotence of “baile funk” and the influence of foreign music. (Heavy Metal acts that could barely get a booking in the U.K. selling out stadiums?!). A perplexing conundrum for those like myself who’ve found so much to treasure in those traditions, particularly from the 60s and 70s when Brazilian music culture reached an apotheosis of creativity.

It’s been so gratifying in recent years to witness a renaissance of those musical values, as a young generation of players more connected to worldwide trends have also sought to reconnect with their own lineage. Brazilian musicians have a unique feel, perhaps samba has literally infused their DNA, no matter what style or approach they take there is always that indigenous quality to the music.

Caixa Cubo are a jazz-fusion trio who plug in to a current of Brazilian music that was exemplified by Azymuth in the 70s; though these three players have their own twist. A touch darker and less obviously Brazilian, there is something so fundamental and pure about their sound, the interaction sounds fresh and spontaneous, intimate and real.

This is a record that will continue to delight with repeated listening such is the quality and grace of the playing. The sole vocal track Palavras (featuring Ze Leonidas) is a beguiling beauty evocative of Milton Nascimento and the best of Brazil’s melodic and harmonic traditions. Their version of Egbert Gismonti’s Baiao Malandro spins the off the wall funk of one of Brazil’s greatest composers into a more digestible contemporary form without losing any of its madcap brilliance. A triumph that will translate as well to fans of Yussef Kamaal and the younger generation of jazz converts as to seasoned old heads like myself.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Laid back, rich jazz beaming with Brazilian elegance, a true feast for the ears whilst hammocking in the sunshine.

TRACK LISTING

1 Angela
2 Khanimambo
3 Palavras
4 Lua Nova
5 Dark Prince
6 Acalanto
7 Baião Malandro

CAKE’s adherence to their original guiding principles has only grown stronger. Originally formed as a somewhat antagonistic answer to grunge, CAKE’s democratic processes, defiant self-reliance, and lucid yet ever-inventive music has made them a nation-state unto themselves, with no obvious peers, belonging to no school. In addition to writing, arranging, producing, and performing their own music, they have taught themselves to engineer their recording projects in their solar-powered studio, which actually generates more power than is needed to run it, causing the building’s electrical meter to run in reverse.

TRACK LISTING

1. Frank Sinatra
2. The Distance
3. Friend Is A Four Letter Word
4. Open Book
5. Daria
6. Race Car Ya-Yas
7. I Will Survive
8. Stickshifts And Safetybelts
9. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
10. It's Coming Down
11. Nugget
12. She'll Come Back To Me
13. Italian Leather Sofa
14. Sad Songs And Waltzes

Released via Sony CMG, "Prolonging The Magic" is the excellent third studio album by American alternative rock band CAKE. It was originally released on 6th Oct, 1998.

A 13 song album, pressed on standard Black, 180gm LP Vinyl. 

The Brighton-based producer and creative mastermind, Caldera, lets us delve into his multi-faceted personality with his new EP, 5D Worlds. No VR set needed, Caldera follows the chant of the sirens and the shamanic incantations but never directly references them: a psychoactive journey without the psychedelics. Caldera’s 5D Worlds is a hyperreal ride, from his signature dubby grooves to his lesser known Tech-Trance whopper fantasies – As the BPM evolves, the sound designs morph and the gentle percussion give way to sonar-like synths and binary rhythms. Are you finally hearing the sirens ? Good, you have arrived at your destination. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: It's mushroom season and Nummer continue to probe the thin veil between realities via sonic shaman Caldera whose mind-expanding sonics should resonate across the multiverse.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Amphibian Dance
A2. Dolphin Skii
B1. Turbine Mode (Underwater Sunset Mix)
B2. Martino Fantasma 

A strong love for classic 60s/70s guitar pop (Beach Boys, Beatles) as well as soft spots for Prince and Hall & Oates display his self proclaimed 'fascination with pop music'. While his influences certainly shape his work, it is his natural ear for melody and movement which make Calder's work both fluid and engaging.

His knack and ambition both in his song writing and production provide a solid foundation for Calder's music to drift in an out of psychy realms. There are no over drenched chorus or walls of sound, instead leaving space for melody and texture to beneatly co-existent. Alex has found the sweet spot between slacker-pop jangle and snug rhymtic production to create reassurance his songs are going somewhere. Intimate handclaps and shakers make it easy for one to visualize the living from which it came as Calder's questions what to do with his time both literally and existentially.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sukie And Me
2. Light Leave Your Eyes
3. Location
4. Time
5. Captivate
6. Fatal Delay
7. Lethargic

Bobby sadly passed away on 23rd March 2023, after a long struggle with mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress, due to an adverse effect from a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. The reissue of his wonderful eponymous album will be available on vinyl across the globe, ensuring that fans of his incomparable talent - and soul music enthusiasts worldwide - can radiate in the deep beauty of this seminal album. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possible quality at Record Industry in Holland

Known principally as a smooth titan of blue-eyed soul, Bobby Caldwell transcended genre tags with consummate ease; he was a musical icon of real class and versatility, cherished the world over. Tragically passing away in March 2023 at the too young age of 71, it still feels as if Bobby's true artistry is profoundly under-appreciated. His double platinum self-titled album from 1978 is a timeless masterpiece of sophisticated jazzy soul brilliance and is strictly canonical. Yes, it's perfect, yet it's been out of press on vinyl for years. We're deeply honoured to present the long-awaited reissue this summer.

Whilst Ned Doheny is known in Japan as "Mr California", native New Yorker Bobby Caldwell has always been "Mr AOR" to his Far-Eastern friends. His distinct charm is an irresistible blend of soul, jazz, and pop influences. He possessed phenomenal songwriting prowess, smooth vocal performances, was both a great soul guitarist and dextrous keyboard player and known for genius chord progressions. It all added up to a multi-layered brilliance entering the studio, and the singular sound he landed on was laced with soulful, sweeping strings and funky horns, touching lightly on disco, while allowing his supple voice to carry the stunning tracks he'd crafted.

String-swept opener "Special To Me" immediately sets the tone with its lush instrumentation, rich harmonies, and Caldwell's velvety-smooth vocals. Next up, a huge one. The infectious, mid-tempo bounce of "My Flame" showcases Caldwell's ability to effortlessly blend catchy pop hooks with soulful arrangements. It's an exquisite, emotive ballad that, at the same time, absolutely SLAPS. Game recognise game, and all that, so, accordingly, Notorious B.I.G. memorably ran with “My Flame” for his 1997 single “Sky’s The Limit”. The rolling, disco-very "Love Won't Wait" is a slick, uptempo track containing heartfelt lyrics intertwined with elegant strings and a horn section to die for. Aching - and achingly cool - single "Can't Say Goodbye" is a real fan favourite, and it's no surprise. It's a laconic, slow-mo jazz-funk stepper, with fantastic, very deliberate playing that closes out the A Side quite exceptionally. "Come To Me" slows proceedings down elegantly to open Side B before the universally agreed-upon masterpiece enters proceedings.

"What You Won't Do for Love," the standout hit that became a classic in its own right, perfectly captured Bobby's ability to infuse a contagious groove with introspective and relatable lyrics. With its instantly recognisable horn riff and Caldwell's soulful delivery, this timeless, chiller anthem continues to captivate audiences and define his musical legacy. He scored huge with the track, taking over the pop and R&B airways with this mellow soul stepper. It has remained a perennial favourite and has been heavily sampled, such is its unique allure; Aaliyah sang over snatches of it on "Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number" and you can hear Caldwell’s vocal sample used for the hook on Tupac’s posthumously released “Do For Love”.

Upon submitting the finished album to his label, they requested more material in hope of a big single. As Bobby remembered to Wax Poetics a few years ago: “Now at this point, I’m mentally exhausted...and bear in mind that I got so close to all the songs I’d written. I gave each song a profound amount of thought, and maybe too much. So, in haste, I went in and cut this song, "What You Won’t Do For Love". Wrote it in a day, cut the rhythm track, overdubbed the horns, I sang the song, and literally turned it in three days after. And lo and behold, the one song I gave the least thought to,” Bobby laughed, “ended up being a national anthem.”

The mysterious, magical "Kalimba Song" is a cosmic, kalimba-driven melodicfunk instrumental - short but oh, so sweet. It's followed by the supreme tearjerker "Take Me Back To Then", Bobby's otherworldly voice deeply longing for a simpler time, "when life was mellow". I think we can all get behind this sentiment. The final cut is arguably its deepest, its low-key finest moment. For us, it is, anyway. The glorious, driving, effortlessly funky guitar-soul jam "Down For The Third Time" is a huge melancholic Be With favourite and has been played by discerning genre-hopping DJs with significant glee for years. Hypnotic, melodic, beautiful. Like the album it elegantly rounds out.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Special To Me 4:00
A2 My Flame 3:30
A3 Love Won't Wait 4:00
A4 Can't Say Goodbye 5:20
B1 Come To Me 2:52
B2 What You Won't Do For Love 4:45
B3 Kalimba Song 2:00
B4 Take Me Back To Then 3:30
B5 Down For The Third Time 3:30

Bobby Caldwell's second album, Cat In The Hat, from 1980, is one of his greatest moments and another masterwork of soulful sophistication. Featuring the eternal "Open Your Eyes", brilliantly sampled by J Dilla for Common's "The Light", it's about as essential as records get. Like its eponymous predecessor, it's been out of print for far too long. To finally release the hugely-anticipated reissue is one of our sincerely proudest moments.

Whilst Ned Doheny is known in Japan as "Mr California", native New Yorker Bobby Caldwell has always been "Mr AOR" to his Far-Eastern friends. His distinct charm is an irresistible blend of soul, jazz, and pop influences. He possessed phenomenal songwriting prowess, smooth vocal performances, was both a great soul guitarist and dextrous keyboard player and known for genius chord progressions. It all added up to a multi-layered brilliance entering the studio, and the singular sound he landed on was laced with soulful, sweeping strings and funky horns, touching lightly on disco, while allowing his supple voice to carry the stunning tracks he'd crafted.

Right from the off, it's easy to tell that Cat In The Hat is a deeply special record. It's fantastically produced and incredibly well-rounded, carving its own lane with deep soul, warm jazz and a stunning vocal delivery that really helped Bobby reach out to some big new audiences at the time. Goosebumps at the ready for the rolling power-piano funk of "Coming Down From Love", opening up the album with a track as good as anything Steely Dan or The Doobies ever crafted, with a vocal performance from the heavens. Pumping AOR wonder "Wrong Or Right" is up there with the slick, classy rhythms of prime Ned Doheny whilst the cool, skipping soul of guitar-drenched "To Know What You've Got" is a funky ballad par excellence, with elemental traces of "What A Fool Believes". No bad thing. Closing out Side A, the folk-funk of "You Promised Me" is a bright, soulful strut with a wonderful vocal coda that just builds. Sensational.

The delicate bounce and falsetto self-harmonising of "It's Over" offers a truly delightful introduction to Side B, and serves as a great precursor to what follows. Bobby's dynamite "Open Your Eyes" is likely the reason you're all here. As if he needed it, the eternal J Dilla further immortalised Caldwell in the hip-hop canon with his production of Common’s epochal “The Light,” which heavily samples the magical “Open Your Eyes.” On a post paying tribute to Bobby in March 2023, Questlove claimed that he "got word Brother Bobby loved it". Bobby's original has seen new life even more recently from the likes of Dwele and Kendrick Lamar and deservingly so, as its insistent drums and staccato piano created a modern-soul classic. You'd think that would be hard to follow, wouldn't you? Not so, when you're Bobby Caldwell. Indeed, the horn-drenched stepper "Mother Of Creation" is absolutely ace, and, whisper it, possibly the album's finest track, all funky piano and guitars with horn lines to die for. Exquisite ballad "I Don't Want To Lose Your Love" rounds out the album beautifully.

Bobby sadly passed away on 23rd March 2023, after a long struggle with mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress, due to an adverse effect from a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. The reissue of Cat In The Hat will be available on vinyl across the globe, ensuring that fans of his incomparable talent - and soul music enthusiasts worldwide - can radiate in the deep beauty of this seminal album. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possible quality at Record Industry in Holland.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Coming Down From Love 4:01
A2 Wrong Or Right 4:56
A3 To Know What You've Got 3:08
A4 You Promised Me 4:01
B1 It's Over 2:56
B2 Open Your Eyes 3:43
B3 Mother Of Creation 5:05
B4 I Don't Want To Lose Your Love 4:35

Domino Records reissue John Cale’s classic live album ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’, featuring his revered interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ amongst many solo versions from his enduring catalogue and previously unreleased outtakes.

‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ was the first live John Cale album to feature him performing solo and ‘unplugged’ - before that term became a mid 1990s buzzword.

In contrast to the jaundiced punk truculence of ‘Sabotage/Live’ (1979) or ‘Even Cowgirls Get The Blues’ (1986), ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ gives us Cale at his most melodic and moving, a mellowed and certainly a soberer man in a Yamamoto jacket and a lopsided haircut running through a selection of his prettiest songs. It’s a Cale many love deeply, a man alone at a concert-hall Steinway revisiting the pop-rock of ‘Paris 1919’ and ‘A Child’s Christmas In Wales’, as wistful and whimsical as any 70s singer songwriter holding court at LA’s Troubadour club. It’s the Cale who disavowed the spiky nihilism and decadence of the Velvets, inspired instead by melodicism of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson (to whom he’d paid haunting homage on ‘Slow Dazzle’s brilliant Beach Boys pastiche ‘Mr. Wilson’). It’s the Cale who improbably took a staff job at Warner-Reprise in LA and - for an all-too-brief moment - became part of the Burbank producers’ mafia alongside Lenny Waronker and his laidback chums. (Lest we forget, 1973’s ‘Paris 1919’ featured members of Little Feat and The Crusaders among the backing musicians.)

Cale being Cale, ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ isn’t all rueful tenderness. The deceptively jaunty ‘Darling I Need You’ is flippantly introduced as a song about “religious awakening in the southern part of the United States,” while Elvis’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is no less gothic in the solo version here than it is in the Grand Guignol horror show of the original on ‘Slow Dazzle’. ‘Guts’ is as close as Cale ever came to Lou Reed at his most withering.

It’s easy to forget that - years before Jeff Buckley and The X-Factor - he was the first artist to recognize the hymnal majesty of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, or that it was his original 1991 reading of the song that popped up on the soundtrack of ‘Shrek’.

TRACK LISTING

On A Wedding Anniversary
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Cordoba
Buffalo Ballet
A Child’s Christmas In Wales
Darling I Need You
Guts
Ship Of Fools
Leaving It Up To You
The Ballad Of Cable Hogue
Chinese Envoy
Dying On The Vine
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend)
Heartbreak Hotel
Style It Takes
Paris 1919
(I Keep A) Close Watch
Thoughtless Kind
Hallelujah
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend) (Outtake)*
Amsterdam (Outtake) *
Broken Hearts (Outtake) *
I’m Waiting For The Man (Outtake) *
Heartbreak Hotel (Outtake - Strings) *
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend) (Outtake - Strings) *
Paris 1919 (Outtake - Strings) *
Antarctica Starts Here (Outtake - Strings) *

* = Bonus Track (REWIGCD107X & REWIGLP107X [& REWIGLP107 As
Digital Download] Only)

For nearly 60 years, or at least since he was a young Welshman who moved to New York and formed The Velvet Underground, Cale has been reinventing his music with dazzling and inspiring regularity. There was the bewitching chamber folk of Paris 1919 followed instantly by the gnarled rock of Fear, the provocative and spare song cycle Music for a New Society followed more than 30 years later by mighty and unabashed electronic updates. Once again, here is Cale, reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. His engrossing 12-track MERCY moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronics toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future.

On MERCY, Cale enlists some of music’s most curious young minds: Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, Actress. They’re only some of the astounding cast here, brilliant musicians who climb inside Cale’s consummate vision of the world and help him redecorate there. Cale turned 80 in March, and he’s watched as many peers have passed away, particularly during the last decade. MERCY is the continuation of a long career’s work with wonder. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; MERCY is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.

The writings and recordings that shaped MERCY piled up for years, as Cale watched society totter at the brink of dystopia. Trump and Brexit, Covid and climate change, civil rights and right-wing extremism—Cale let the bad news of the day filter into his lines, whether that meant contemplating the sovereignty and legal status of sea ice melting near the poles or the unhinged arming of Americans. Lessons from a life (still being) richly lived floated to the fore, too, nodded to on the previously released “NIGHT CRAWLING.” If we’re always regretting our past, aren’t we conscripting ourselves to permanent disappointment?

During “STORY OF BLOOD,” after the piano prelude gives way to a frame-rattling beat and synthesizers that feel like sunshine splashed across a snowfield, the voices of Cale and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering slide past one another, two phantoms trying to find a partner amid the modern din. “Swing your soul,” they both sing in aspiration. In the final verse, Cale remembers this existence is not just about himself. “I’m going back to get them, my friends in the morning. Bring them with me into the light.” The accompanying video by Emmy-winning director Jethro Waters is a mix of disturbing and serene featuring both Cale and Weyes Blood. Its deep tones and religious images emphasize the track’s dark, spiritual mood.

Cale elaborates: “I’d been listening to Weyes Blood’s latest record and remembered Natalie’s puritanical vocals. I thought if I could get her to come and sing with me on the ‘Swing your soul’ section, and a few other harmonies, it would be beautiful. What I got from her was something else! Once I understood the versatility in her voice, it was as if I’d written the song with her in mind all along. Her range and fearless approach to tonality was an unexpected surprise. There’s even a little passage in there where she’s a dead-ringer for Nico.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mercy Feat. Laurel Halo
2. Marilyn Monroe’s Leg (Beauty Elsewhere) Feat. Actress
3. Noise Of You
4. Story Of Blood Feat. Weyes Blood
5. Time Stands Still Feat. Sylvan Esso
6. Moonstruck (Nico’s Song)
7. Everlasting Days Feat. Animal Collective
8. Night Crawling
9. Not The End Of The World
10. The Legal Status Of Ice Feat. Fat White Family
11. I Know You’re Happy Feat. Tei Shi
12. Out Your Window

Despite the album’s playful title, Cale’s second album in just over a year still contains the same feelings of fierce and inquisitive rage that were present in 2023 album MERCY. He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. But this is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs, as throughout his career of more than six decades, Cale has never been much for repetition. His vanguard-shaping enthusiasms have shifted among ecstatic classicism and unbound rock, classic songcraft and electronic reimagination with proud restlessness.

And so, on POPtical Illusion, he foregoes the illustrious cast to burrow mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible. Produced by Cale and longtime artistic partner Nita Scott, POPtical Illusion is the work of someone trying to turn toward the future – exactly as Cale always has.

TRACK LISTING

1. God Made Me Do It (don’t Ask Me Again)
2. Davies And Wales
3. Calling You Out
4. Edge Of Reason
5. I’m Angry
6. How We See The Light
7. Company Commander
8. Setting Fires
9. Shark-Shark
10. Funkball The Brewster
11. All To The Good
12. Laughing In My Sleep
13. There Will Be No River

First time vinyl repress of this John Cale album, originally released on the Opal label in 1989, produced by Brian Eno.

“‘Words For The Dying’ has at its heart The Falklands Suite, Cale’s baroque if heartfelt response to the Anglo-Argentinian War, which finds him setting the poems of his beloved Dylan Thomas to music. When building songs around another’s words, the results often sound forced, but Cale does a magnificent job of compressing Thomas’s lyricism into neat melodic phrases, themselves just components of a vast harmonic mega-structure scored for the USSR’s Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gostelradio. A project that could easily have collapsed under the weight of its own ambition is instead a late masterpiece, thanks to Cale’s deep-seated compositional genius, and unobtrusive but resonant production from Brian Eno.” - Kiran Sande

TRACK LISTING

The Falkland Suite
Introduction
There Was A Saviour
Interlude I
On A Wedding
Anniversary
Interlude II
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Do Not Go Gentle Into That
Good Night

Songs Without Words. II
The Soul Of Carmen
Miranda

Calendar Crowd was the duo of Alan Heaton and Terence Tiernan who met in their hometown of Widnes, Cheshire as schoolboys and played together in various bands in the ‘70s. In the ‘80s they formed a 6-piece band called Room For Humans and recorded one single “Telephone Telephone / Girlfriend”. When the band split and Alan and Terence continued as Calendar Crowd in a more experimental direction. Their influences were wide reaching: Kraftwerk, Neu, Cabaret Voltaire, Eno, PIL, and Joy Division. In 1982 they released their debut single “Perfect Hideaway / Perfect Hideaway Dub” on 7”. Guitarist David Knowles joined them as they toured the UK and recorded and released their follow up EP “Listen in to the Heart” in 1985.

A reviewer at the time called Calendar Crowd 'A Moody Merseyside trio with strong atmospheric tunes and haunting lyrics.' For this reissue Dark Entries compiled both singles on one EP featuring all four songs. "Perfect Hideway" is evocative and dreamy, the music escorts you on a tour of icy landscapes, with Terrance’s squally, vocals guiding the way through volatile synthscapes accented by bright brass stabs. Meanwhile the dub strips back the vocals, adds delayed samples and heart beat pounding drums. On the B-side “Listen in to the Heart” and “Questions Answers” are darker electronic rhythm tracks with layers of ethereal keyboards and guitar melodies. Another synth classic given a new lease of life from the good folks at Dark Entries. 

TRACK LISTING

Perfect Hideaway
Perfect Hideaway Dub
Listen In To The Heart 
Questions Answers

Iron & Wine's Sam Beam and the members of Calexico convened in December 2004 at Calexico's home base of Wavelab Studios in Tucson, Arizona. The idea of working together had been tossed around for over three years, though neither bands' schedule loaned itself into making it a reality until then. The resulting session "In the Reins", is a mini-album that is a truly harmonious affair sure to satisfy fans of both bands. The seven tracks are Sam Beam originals and were fleshed out by the full Calexico band. The record also features newcomer Natalie Wyants on vocals, Salvador Duran, a local fixture of the Tucson Flamenco scene, on vocals and Botas. Of course no Wavelab experience would be complete without the appearance of Nick Luca (NL Trio/John Doe Band) and Craig Schumacher, both of whom contributed to the record in the form of engineering and performance.

TRACK LISTING

He Lays In The Reins
Prison On Route 41
History Of Lovers
Red Dust
16, Maybe Less
Burn That Broken Bed
Dead Mans Will

For the better part of two decades, the acclaimed band Calexico has crossed musical barriers, embracing a multitude of styles, variety in instrumentation, and well-cultivated signature sounds. With 'Edge of the Sun' they take inspiration from a trip to a place surprisingly unexplored by the band before in Mexico City, and with the benefit of many friends and comrades to help guide the way.

Encouraged by the experience, the guest list grew to include Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses), Nick Urata (Devotchka), Carla Morrison, Gaby Moreno, Amparo Sanchez, multi-instrumentalists from the Greek band Takim, and Neko Case. Burnsʼ brother John Burns lent a hand to some lyrics and songwriting, and the bandʼs keyboardist, Sergio Mendoza, stepped up to co-write and arrange certain songs, ultimately co-producing the album along with Burns, John Convertino, and longtime associate Craig Schumacher.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Calexico have been honing their Latin-American infused dusty desert blues for the best part of 20 years, and here, they've got it bang on.

TRACK LISTING

1. Falling From The Sky With Ben Bridwell (Band Of Horses) 
2. Bullets & Rocks With Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) 
3. When The Angels Played With Pieta Brown & Greg Leisz 
4. Tapping On The Line With Neko Case 
5. Cumbia De Donde With Amparo Sanchez 
6. Miles From The Sea With Gaby Moreno 
7. Coyoacán 
8. Beneath The City Of Dreams With Gaby Moreno 
9. Woodshed Waltz With Greg Leisz 
10. Moon Never Rises With Carla Morrison 
11. World Undone With Takim 
12. Follow The River With Nick Urata (Devotchka)

Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino return with their luminous 10th studio album, El Mirador; a hopeful, kaleidoscopic beacon of rock, bluesy ruminations and Latin American sounds.

Convening at longtime bandmate Sergio Mendoza's home studio in Tucson, Arizona, the ensemble recorded throughout the summer of 2021, crafting one of their most riveting and whimsical productions to date. Convertino, who now resides in El Paso, and Burns, who relocated to Boise in 2020, channeled cherished memories of Southwestern landscapes and joyful barrio melting pots into an evocative love letter to the desert borderlands that nourished them for over 20 years.

“El Mirador” features gossamer vocals from Guatemalan singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno, while Spanish rocker Jairo Zavala brings his signature bravado to “Cumbia Peninsula.” By working with friends and recurring collaborators, Calexico also highlights the unique social and linguistic intersections at the US-Mexico border and the magnificent possibilities of a borderless world.

El Mirador stands both as a lookout point and beacon in the dark; an opportunity to search inwards, ponder our connections to the Earth and its people, and hopefully illuminate a path forward. After decades on the road Calexico's music remains boundless and romantic, still gazing upon the horizon in search of their next adventure.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Wonderful new album from Joey Burns and John Convertino. Although still infused with Latin American influences, the last few release from Calexico have taken a 'poppier' route. On this album though, they hark back to dusty desert blues of their earlier releases. Shimmering through the baking Tuscon heat, you can almost feel the sun on your back.

TRACK LISTING

A1. El Mirador
A2. Harness The Wind
A3. Cumbia Peninsula
A4. Then You Might See
A5. Cumbia Del Polvo
A6. El Paso
B1. The El Burro Song
B2. Liberada
B3. Turquoise
B4. Constellation
B5. Rancho Azul
B6. Caldera

In early 2003, Calexico released their seminal album ‘Feast of Wire’, the album that truly marked the duo’s critical and commercial breakthrough. Beginning in June, the band will play a series of headline shows across the year performing the landmark ‘Feast of Wire’ in full as well as a slew of beloved songs from the band’s full repertoire. In addition to the headline dates, the band will play a handful of festivals as well across Europe

TRACK LISTING

Feast Of Wire - LP1 (45 RPM):
A01 Sunken Waltz
A02 Quattro (World Drifts In)
A03 Stucco
A04 Black Heart
B05 Pepita
B06 Not Even Stevie Nicks...
B07 Close Behind
B08 Woven Birds

LP2 (45 Rpm):
C09 The Book And The Canal
C10 Attack! El Robot! Attack!
C11 Across The Wire
C12 Dub Latina
C13 Güero Canelo
D14 Alone Again Or (Bonus Track)
D15 Whipping The Horse's Eye
D16 Crumble
D17 No Doze

More Cowboys In Sweden - Live At China Theatre Stockholm, 25.04.2003 - LP3 (33 RPM):
E18 Pepita
E19 Across The Wire
E20 Quattro
E21 Dub Latina
E22 Sunken Waltz
E23 Not Even Stevie Nicks
E24 Woven Birds
E25 Güero Canelo
E26 Black Heart
E27 Alone Again Or

In 2000 the Tucson band released their second album proper and further refined their desert noir soundscapes. On this album Calexico opted for a more intimate form of expression, for a stylish, sombre, bleak ballad style that is often drenched in psychedelic reverbs and accented by jazz instruments.

Then again it does contain their first forays into the semi pop song with The Ballad Of Cable Hogue and eventually it was reissued with a version of "Crystal Frontier" that had quickly become a live favourite and went on to become their first pan European radio hit and calling card.

Repressed on vinyl for the first time in a good while, limited availability. Spoke is the debut studio album of Calexico, from Arizona. The back cover photo of Spoke is a furrowing farm machine, and in the context of this recording, one might imagine clouds of birds following the machinery to eat up the disturbed insects. Calexico snatch up the bits of Americana turned out by a rototilling of the national music psyche. The 19 resultant tracks can be small as insects (the shortest being half a minute in length) and erratic in flight; there are lo-fi songs and themes that proceed without concern for what came before. One bit is held up by guitar, another by accordion, then one by vibes. A bit of desert dust sprinkled throughout may be the only constant theme -- a Santa Fe rummage sale of sounds. Spoke is very intriguing and well worth exploring.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Low Expectations
A2 Mind The Gap
A3 Mazurra
A4 Sanchez
A5 Haul
A6 Slag
A7 Paper Route
A8 Glimpse
A9 Navy Cut
A10 Spokes

B1 Scout
B2 Point Vicente
B3 Wash
B4 Ice Cream Jeep
B5 Windjammer
B6 Mazurka
B7 Removed
B8 Stinging Nettle

New Calibre album "Rudy". The album features all of the previously unreleased tracks from Calibre’s Boiler Room Set: "Stunted", "Dumb Bum", "The Game", "Cousin", "No Stopping" & "Treason".

Calibre, with the help of Radio 1 and Fabio, invented liquid drum and bass in the late 90s early 00s. The term was originally coined by Fabio during his Radio 1 residency to describe the music Calibre was producing at the time. Fabio described it as 'liquid gold', and so the term 'liquid' stuck.

Fast forward to now and (real name) Dominick Martin has pretty much done it all in underground electronic music: toured the world, developed his own label, operated under varies different aliases and guises (and styles!) and, closer to home, ran the Soul: R imprint with sadly departed MCR legend Marcus Intelex (another pioneer of the liquid style).

Released on his own label Signature, "Rudy" finds the Northern Irish producer expanding sounds he's made his own. Sleek beats, sub rattling bass, delicate poise, musical licks and deep atmospheres. There's an intelligence and musicality at work here that puts him miles ahead of any jump-up or nu-jungle pretenders.

A fully engrossing listen which suck you straight into its world, the expansive triple pack (pressed at maximum fidelity) sees straight up DnB rollers, liquid DnB and neurofunk flavours all explored with Calibre’s deft of hand and bass precision. It's another grandiose statement from the DnB master and shows that he's still got control of the bass bins in 2024. Recommended! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Liquid drum and bass pioneer returns with another highly anticipated triple pack on his Signature label. Full fat, highly musical offerings with plenty of bass detail; there's few impart such class and sophistication into the genre as Calibre.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Stunted
A2. More Fool Me
B1. The Game
B2. Heaven
C1. Tripping Out
C2. Cousin
D1. Treason
D2. Dumb Bum
E1. Flu Jet
E2. No Stopping
F1. Warbling
F2. Hard To Believe

CALIBRO 35 the band formed by Massimo Martellotta, Enrico Gabrielli, Luca Cavina, Fabio Rondanini and Tommaso Colliva - announce the release of the ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK OF BLANCA, the TV series produced by Lux Vide in collaboration with Rai Fiction, broadcast in prime time on Rai 1 starting from Monday 22 November. BLANCA, a crime drama directed by Jan Maria Michelini and based on the novel of the same name by Patrizia Rinaldi, tells the extraordinary journey of a young blind woman who has the opportunity to realize the dream she had since childhood: to become a police consultant.

Accompanying this journey, the original music of CALIBRO 35. The soundtrack will be available on limited edition Double LP next February 18th. 28 tracks in total (of which 6 exclusively on the vinyl format), which represent a selection of over 150 entirely composed by CALIBRO 35 to create the sound universe of BLANCA: an impressive and choral work, which has engaged all the components of the Calibro for a long time, giving the band the opportunity to develop a very vast soundscape ranging from retro funk of some diegetic music to modern crime "in Caliber 35 sauce" of investigative and tension scenes. The BLANCA soundtrack is a concentrate of the fifteen years of activity of the CALIBRO 35 and probably gives a glimpse of the seeds of what will come in the next.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ready Steady (feat. MEI & Arya Delgado)
2. That Kind Of Feeling
3. Cool Funk
4. Tema Di Blanca (Risoluzione)
5. White Shark (feat. Elisa Zoot)
6. Indagini
7. La Ragazza Col Cane
8. Negli Abissi
9. I See Through You (feat. Elisa Zoot)
10. Fantasmi Nel Palazzo
11. Villapizzone
12. Colossei E Container
13. The World Is Blind (feat. Tahnee Rodriguez)
14. It' A Man's Man's Man's World (feat. Marina Maximilian)
15. Atmosfera 6
16. Downfall
17. Secoli Di Ricordi
18. Spy Funk
19. Super Funk
20. Thai Massage
21. Genova Chiama (feat. Gorka)
22. Danza Della Pioggia
23. Lavanderia A Gettoni
24. Ricordi Drammatico Tensivo
25. Tema Di Blanca (Al Buio)
26. Afrobar
27. Danza Dei Bottoni
28. The Hardest Day Of My Life (feat. Tom Harper Newton)

Italian cult cinematic combo Calibro 35 are back with their new studio album Nouvelles Aventures. The new album will be available abroad on a limited edition Crystal Clear Gatefold LP on June 30th, distributed worldwide via Record Kicks. The crystal clear vinyl edition is a Record Kicks exclusive and is limited to 1000 copies, which makes it an instant collector's item.

After last year's Scacco Al Maestro, the 2 tribute-albums dedicated to "il maestro" Ennio Morricone, followed by the "Calibro 35 plays Morricone" tour and the releasing of the cost of TV drama series Blanca, Calibro 35 are back with Nouvelles Aventures, a new studio album of original material. Nouvelles Aventures was recorded in Naples at Auditorium Novecento, the former Phonotype Records, one of the most legendary and fascinating Italian recording studios. The new LP sees the group making full use of their knowledge and resources, refined and enriched over the years, back to making "Calibro's music": a unique mix of funk, progressive rock, alternative jazz and wide-spectrum cinematic music the public has known them for in fifteen years of career.

"After a couple of intense and stimulating years playing Morricone and writing music for the TV drama Blanca", Calibro 35 said, "we had a great desire to make new inspired music. To do so, we left home and we shut ourselves up in the splendid space-time capsule that is the Auditorium Novecento studio. The result is a series of musical voyages in which we concentrated all our artistic and human experiences. As in Verne's imaginary and extraordinary journeys, we explored distant places where we had never been before. We then happened to return to more familiar shores and discover them with new eyes without realizing it. We borrowed the title Nouvelles Aventures from György Ligeti, precisely because after fifteen years of building ourselves, we are ready for new adventures".

Nouvelles Aventures was anticipated by the first extract "Extraordinaire", an almost 6-minute song that once again confirms the band's aptitude for the exploration of unpredictable sound territories: a music that, on one hand sounds liquid and abstract, while on the other, it cuts through the psychedelic mists, with a complex architecture.

Described by Rolling Stone as "the most fascinating, retro-maniac and genuine thing that has happened to Italy in the past few years", Milan-based Calibro 35 enjoy a worldwide reputation as one of the coolest independent bands around. Active since 2007, during their long career they were sampled by Dr. Dre on Compton ("One Shot One Kill" feat. Snoop Dogg), Jay Z ("Picasso Baby"), The Child of Lov & Damon Albarn ("One Day") and Demigodz ("The Summer Of Sam"). They played major venues and festivals all over Europe and as unique musicians they collaborated with, amongst others: PJ Harvey, Mike Patton, John Parish, Stewart Copeland and Rokia Traoré.

TRACK LISTING

1. Apnea
2. Extraordinaire
3. Gun Powder
4. Ottofante
5. Dinamometro
6. Mompracem
7. Eteretaco
8. Novecento E Mille
9. Bolero!
10. Milan Au 30ème Siècle

Record Kicks is proud to present POST MOMENTUM, the new EP by Italian cult combo Calibro 35 to be released on June 11th on digital platforms and on July 9th on limited edition 12" vinyl. The extended-play comes 17 months after the acclaimed previous Calibro 35 album MOMENTUM, which – as the band stated: "represented a look at nowadays and a reflection about making music right in the time that we're living". The tour began right after the album release in January 2020, but it was soon interrupted when the whole world suddenly stopped because of the Pandemic. Now "POST MOMENTUM" represents a re-start and the first step towards the future, picking up where they left off.

Among the six tracks of the EP, while "Digi-Tails" and "Stars and Stripes, Chirps and Bleeps" express the unique musicianship of Calibro 35 as we have come to know over the years, "Being a Robot is Awesome" and "Artificial Black Moon" see the participation of a guest from the world to come: Sophia, the humanoid developed by Hanson Robotics capable of interacting autonomously with everything around it, reminding us how being a Robot could prove to be the best strategy to survive sometimes. The opening of the EP is an alternative version of the single "Stan Lee" enriched by two heavyweights of Italian rap: Ensi and Ghemon that don't make us miss Illa J. The EP ends with another alternate version of "Stan Lee", this time in all its instrumental glory.
Active since 2008, Calibro 35 enjoy a worldwide reputation as one of the coolest independent bands around. During their thirteen-year career, they were sampled by Dr. Dre on his Compton album, Jay-Z, The Child of lov & Damon Albarn; they shared stages worldwide with the likes of Roy Ayers, Muse, Sun Ra Arkestra, Sharon Jones, Thundercat and Headhunters and as unique musicians they collaborated with, amongst others, PJ Harvey, Mike Patton, John Parish and Stewart Copeland and Nic Cester (The Jet). Described by Rolling Stone magazine as "the most fascinating, retro-maniac and genuine thing that happened to Italy in the last years", Calibro 35 now count on a number of aficionados worldwide including VIP fans such as Dj Food (Ninja Tune), Mr Scruff and Huey Morgan (Fun Lovin' Criminals) among others.

The band started back in 2007 when Grammy award winner producer Tommaso Colliva (Muse), invited some of the best musicians from the Italian indie scene - Enrico Gabrielli (PJ Harvey, Mike Patton, John Parish), Massimo Martellotta (Stewart Copeland, Adrian Younge), Luca Cavina (Retox, Zeus!), Fabio Rondanini (John Parish, Daniel Johnston) - to record some Italian golden age soundtracks. What started as a studio b-side project evolved in a full time band able to release 7 heavily acclaimed albums. Their last album MOMENTUM came out on Record Kicks on January 24th 2020. "MOMENTUM" stood out as a new starting point for the project.

TRACK LISTING

1. Stan Lee (Alternate Version) [feat. Ensi & Ghemon]
2. Digi-Tails
3. Being A Robot Is Awesome
4. Stars And Stripes, Chirps And Bleeps
5. Artificial Black Moon
6. Stan Lee (Alternate Instrumental)

In an underground music landscape where 140 characters equals 'journalism' and lone MP3s propel bands to momentary internet stardom, bands are here today and gone tomorrow. Califone is a band that defies this blueprint. Their albums are full of layers and textures, offering endless depth, entire universes to lose yourself in – and beyond the thick spectrum of sound, they do something even more important: They write great songs. Califone is a band that will stand the test of time. The band is at the peak of its powers on "All My Friends Are Funeral Singers", its sixth song based album. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006's acclaimed "Roots And Crowns", the album is the strongest collection of songs in a career with no shortage of strength. The subtlety and detail of Califone's previous work is present here – the atmospheres are carefully nuanced, the percussion is both rattling and melodic, the melodies are rich and soulful, interspersed throughout softly strummed folk and electrified blues. "All My Friends Are Funeral Singers" is a dense collage of sounds, expertly formed into fully realized pop songs.

Echo Mine is Califone’s score to Robyn Mineko Williams’ dance. The movement and the music started together and grew together, like two clear entities. At times totally intertwined and at other times bouncing off one another, sort of like reflections. But, somehow, always connected and listening. Ben Massarella, Brian Deck and I worked in a way that felt like a return to home; Brian handling the engineering, electronics, drums and overall sound of the piece, Ben adding percussion, feel, essential textures and colors. I felt like my job was to hover over all of it like a moth. Find melody in everything. Leave openings for everyone to work at the top of their creativity. We made our album, Roomsound, in much the same way (almost 20 years ago). Three of us in the studio ‘ Be humans. Play together as much as possible. A good feel beats perfection every time. Add other musicians to add other voices and other colors, to do the things we can’t do.

TRACK LISTING

Romans
Bandicoot
Night Gallery
Projector
Howard St & The Beach Nov 1988 After 11
Flawed Gtr
Echo Mine
Carlton Says: Find It. It’s Still There
Snow Angel V1
By The Time The Starlight Reaches Our Eyes
Snow Angel V2

“‘Heron King Blues’ is about the letting go. Each song its own ceremony. The earth, sun and moon. Wingbones. Shadow maps and dream logic. Stoplights. Meat Trucks. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Cocaine. Wild eyed robbers. Hunchbacked derelicts. Broken down angels, Lepers. Gay Lithuanians. Cheaters. Sex. Beggars. Rabid dogs. Sirens. Undertows. Reverse magnetism. Cock fighting. Electric shock therapy. Trick birds. Floods. Ancient Hebrew texts. The Illuminati. Haboobs. Bleach. Expired medicine. Severed tongues. Dragons, Spirit telephones. Bees. Modern Architecture. Electric fences. Dianetics. ESP. Snakes. Poltergeist. Haunted spaces. Crop circles. Demons. Feedback loops. ? “How does one capture lightning in a bottle? You could call me a witness, or better yet an interloper, briefly given the wheel to the mythological ship called Califone. Where others might have attempted to exercise the demons, I chose to let the spirits run wild. We bored under the earth’s surface into its core until we reached the belly of the beast. These aren’t Songs of Love and Hate. This is no Street Hassle. No Main Street here. This is music that was pulled from the abattoir of Chicago rock, tattered and bruised and barely breathing. This is not music for pussies.” - Michael Krassner (Califone, Boxhead Ensemble, The Lofty Pillars), August, 2017

Long out-of-print vinyl reissue of Califone’s third, critically acclaimed full length.

Includes unreleased bonus tracks.

Available on vinyl for the first time in 10 years, with new cover design by the band’s Tim Rutilli. “Uniting where you come from - your roots - with what you strive to be or what you reinvent yourself to become - crowns,” explains Tim Rutili. “At the bottom of these songs are the memories and images you sift through in the process.”

TRACK LISTING

Pink And Sour
Spider’s House
Sunday Noises
The Eye You Lost In The
Crusades
A Chinese Actor
Alice Crawley
The Orchids (Psychic TV)
Burned By The Christians
Black Metal Valentine
Rose-Petal-Ear
3 Legged Animals

‘Stitches’, the new album from Califone, touches on all permutable definitions of the word - sewing together, loops, yarn, abdominal pain. Archetypes and mythological figures rub shoulders with bruised civilians throughout this odyssey.

Intimate timbres - garage sale drum machines, slack guitar strings, hushed vocals - offset the album’s cinematic inclinations. The listener moves through a landscape of Old Testament blood and guts, spaghetti Western deserts and south western horizons, zeroing in on emotions and images that cannot be glanced over.

TRACK LISTING

Movie Music Kills A Kiss
Stitches
Frosted Tips
Magdalene
Bells Break Arms
Moonbath.brainsalt.a.holy.fool
Moses
A Thin Skin Of Bullfight Dust
We Are A Payphone
Turtle Eggs / An Optimist

Part experimental indie and part '70s soft rock, Califone's first record in three years finds creative force Tim Rutili reaching new levels of harmony, fragility, and confidence

Whether detailing aging goths retaining their identity through year- long spooky decorations ("Halloween"), an imagined conversation with an inbred monarch ("Habsburg Jaw"), or the conflicts between identity and technology ("Ox- Eye"), Villagers' nine tracks spread out and luxuriates in the messy darkness of modern life.

Like sitting in awe on the porch swing at the end of the world, Califone's latest marvels at the edge of the universe spreading into the darkness of infinity. With 25 years of Califone in his catalog (not to mention a variety of other projects, including alt rock heroes Red Red Meat), the Chicago- born, Los Angeles- based knows well how to find that moment of awe and bliss even as things are falling apart.

Part poet, part abstract painter, and always surrounded by a variety of hypertalented collaborators (here including longtime cohorts Ben Massarella, Michael Krassner, Rachel Blumberg, and Brian Deck, as well as the likes of Nora O'Connor and Finom's Macie Stewart), Rutili has always excelled at luring listeners through elusive lyrics, flashes of shadows and images coming together in disarming unity.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Habsburg Jaw
2. Eyelash
3. McMansions
4. Villagers
5. Comedy
6. Ox-Eye
7. Halloween
8. Skunkish

"absent origin" is the latest album by multi-disciplinary artist Mira Calix released via Warp Records.

After periods when many things break down, new things need to be made from fragments. absent origin uses the process of collage to make sense of such fragments. Burrowed deep in rolling hills of books and magazines of her source material, Mira Calix’s studio took shape of a Scandi-Noir detectives office but in place of suspect is Calix herself cut and pasted into the artworks that circle this album. Immersing herself into the history of collage, she researched the various processes applied by artists, as well as the medium's history in relation to the 20th century and political upheaval.

Every song on the album was created by applying a different collage process relating to a different visual artist, spanning the history of collage to contemporaries of the practice. The sonic materials are subjected to a myriad of processes; layered, synthesised, constructed and assembled into electronic melodies, textures and complex, frisky dance rhythms that are constantly shifting in surprising ways. absent origin employs collage to make sense of the current moment of displaced voices, disjunction and political unrest.

On mark of resistance the collage works of Hannah Wilke have been used as inspiration; Wilke’s work is known for exploring feminist issues and aesthetics which is a fitting source of power and solidarity for the first female signee to Warp. The shredding and recreating continues on silence is silver where Matisse’s later works are referenced and on GARGLE (command V) Hannah Höch’s pioneering collage form techniques can be heard as Calix draws our attention back to the present chaos of politics and media. Syncopated and manipulated voices of rap, poetry and found sound jitter through like Jenga, fractions fractured factions and GARGLE. Although an album of sonic splinters, the consistent form is a stance on changing society for the better through art - an ethos she shares with her muses.

Calix’s recording sessions are from all over the world are the many fragments we hear across the record; from India to Tasmania, Jordan to Belgium, China to Uganda, her former home of South Africa, to her current home in Britain. Slicing into these are further recordings of vocalists, percussionists, choirs, orchestras, quartets and soloists, never appearing in the form in which they were originally intended. The record is a polyphony of predominantly diverse female voices held together by pulsating baselines, haunting electronic sounds and orchestrated melodies and with them, we travel.

As we travel, we glimpse artifacts, as if from the train window; a familiar voice, an image we once knew, but by the time we are able to focus it is long gone. The album fizzes with a political energy and the interconnectedness of everything. At this moment in time, there is an impossibility of separating one thing from another; the effect is strange and not exactly reassuring. Collage suggests infinite possibilities and each track here is a singularly unique compositional combine, a dizzying hall of mirrors with its own unlikely harmony, it’s own distinctive rhythm. On absent origin, collage becomes the tool to make sense of a present that is often anything but.

*Please note that the strike-through and lower casing are deliberate in the album title and track names*

TRACK LISTING

01. A Mark Of Resistance
02. There Is Always A Girl With A Secret
03. Silence Is Silver
04. Bower Of Bliss
05. Wooddrifts
06. Nkosezane - For My Daddy
07. Like Jenga (only It Reaches All The Way To The Sky And It’s Made Of Knives)
08. Doggerland (between The Acts)
09. Fundamental Things
10. Fractions Fractured Factions
11. I’m In Love With The End
12. Surrender
13. GARGLE (command V)
14. Dishàng Shuãng (edit)
15. Transport Me
16. An Infinite Thrum (archipelago)
17. The Abandoned Colony Collapsed My World

Call And Response are a musical ensemble formed in 1998 when Simone Rubi (keyboards, vocals) and Daniel Judd (guitar), who shared a love of obscure pop music, film soundtracks, and synthesizers, decided to collaborate on a musical project in the Bay Area, California. The music they compose has elements of classic pop, spacey jazz, film soundtracks, folk and soul music - only some of the musical inspirations drawn upon by the group. With this record, the band innovates a sound that is impressionistic, mystical, and beautiful. All ten songs on the album were recorded and produced in San Francisco by Dylan Magierek (Mark Kozelek, Low, Erlend Oye).

Dub is a spiritual, abstract, visceral, mystical thing. Finite and infinite at the same time. Deeply rooted in the earth and embracing outer space. Don’t be fooled by names, dub has come and gone. Dub is a ghost, a duppy.

Here you will find versions of the ‘Dream River’ songs that have been killed and resurrected, spilling tales of the other side of life in a language conceivable only if you let yourself be taken there.

Introducing a worldwide audience to the bumpin’ and rollin’ new sound of Bill Callahan.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: If you loved last year's parent album as much as we did at Piccadilly, you'll think you've died and gone to heaven when you hear this blissed-out dub version. Totally gorgeous!

TRACK LISTING

Thank Dub
Expanding Dub
Small Dub
Call It Dub
Ride My Dub
Summer Dub
Transforming Dub
Highs In The Mid-40s Dub

Dub is a spiritual, abstract, visceral, mystical thing. Finite and infinite at the same time. Deeply rooted in the earth and embracing outer space. Don’t be fooled by names, dub has come and gone. Dub is a ghost, a duppy.

Here you will find versions of the ‘Dream River’ songs that have been killed and resurrected, spilling tales of the other side of life in a language conceivable only if you let yourself be taken there.

Introducing a worldwide audience to the bumpin’ and rollin’ new sound of Bill Callahan.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: If you loved last year's parent album as much as we did at Piccadilly, you'll think you've died and gone to heaven when you hear this blissed-out dub version. Totally gorgeous!

TRACK LISTING

Thank Dub
Expanding Dub
Small Dub
Call It Dub
Ride My Dub
Summer Dub
Transforming Dub
Highs In The Mid-40s Dub

The Blind Date Party hosted by Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and featuring AZITA, Matt Sweeney, Alasdair Roberts, Matt Kinsey, Sean O’Hagan, Bill MacKay, George Xylouris, Dead Rider, David Pajo, Mick Turner, Meg Baird, Ty Segall, Emmett Kelly, Cory Hanson, Six Organs of Admittance, David Grubbs, Cassie Berman, Cooper Crain and Sir Richard Bishop happened online in the fall and winter of ’20–’21 — but the party planning dated back to the spring of 2020. Stuck at home, with no gigs in the foreseeable future, Bill, Bonnie and Drag City needed an outreach program to keep themselves busy, not to mention sane. In the absence of any company or anything on the calendar, playing songs they loved was an idea; playing with people they loved, the desire. And making it fun — so pairing someone with someone else having no say in the matter, the essence of the blind date, was the plan. Favorite songs were chose; players from around the Drag City galaxy were messaged. Pretty soon, songs were flying back and forth — music in the air!

And thus, they were entertained throughout the summer of 2020, when so much else in the world seemed so completely wrong. By the fall, the songs started to appear online: Bill and Bonnie singing a song by someone they loved and admired; each song cut by another another artist they loved and admired, then sent to Bill and Bonny to provide the finishing touches. The spotlight pointed in every direction each week: toward the singers and writers who’d originally played the songs (Yusuf Islam, Hank Williams Jr., Dave Rich, The Other

Years, Billie Eilish, Steely Dan, Lou Reed, Bill Callahan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Wyatt, Lowell George, Johnnie Frierson, Air Supply, Will Oldham, Leonard Cohen, David Berman, Iggy Pop and John Prine), toward their featured collaborators, the artists whose artwork adorned each digital single and videos made by still more collaborators. And you, the listener.

Like the best parties, it turned out to be everything and more than they’d even hoped for. So many more people were involved in the process that we can get on the page here. Suffice to say, making records over the years has required a broad sense of community and an always-surprising mix of independence and unity, inspiration and utility. Some of our best memories are those where as many of our folks as as possible were together in one place at one time. In those moments, it was just a great thing just to be there. And with others looking in . . . this was a joy one could only be infinitely lucky to feel and to take for granted, as well.

The Blind Date Party was one of these, maybe the most improbable one yet. It’s for everyone who’s here and it’s in the name of everyone who’s gone but will never go and will always live with us here. This album will too.

And thus, we are entertained.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Combining the best elements of each others talents 'Blind Date Party' finds Bill and Will in fabulous form. Mellow, dark, country-folk laments to snuggle up to during the cold winter months.

TRACK LISTING

A
The Blackness Of The Night (feat. Azita)
OD'd In Denver (feat. Matt Sweeney)
I've Made Up My Mind (feat. Alasdair Roberts)
Red-Tailed Hawk (feat. Matt Kinsey)
Wish You Were Gay (feat. Sean O'Hagan)
Our Anniversary (feat. Dead Rider)
B
Rooftop Garden (feat. George Xylouris)
Deacon Blues (feat. Bill MacKay)
I Love You (feat. David Pajo)
C
Sea Song (feat. Mick Turner)
I've Been The One (feat. Meg Baird)
Miracles (feat. Ty Segall)
I Want To Go To The Beach (feat. Cooper Crain)
D
Night Rider's Lament (feat. Cory Hanson)
Arise, Therefore (feat. Six Organs Of Admittance)
The Night Of Santiago (feat. David Grubbs)
The Wild Kindness (feat. Cassie Berman)
Lost In Love (feat. Emmett Kelly)
She Is My Everything (feat. Sir Richard Bishop)

For his first record in….uh, well, just a little over a year (!), Bill Callahan’s given us his first Gold Record. They can’t all be gold, and they’re not all six years apart either — all good! You could probably call the album “Gold Records,” too: all the songs have a stand-alone feel, like singles, meant for you to have a deep encounter with all of a sudden, from the start of the song to the finish. And what do you got when you have a record full of singles — and let’s face it, hit singles, at that?

That’s a Gold Record for you.

From the top, it’s clear this is music with an affection for people, as Bill immediately slips easily and deeply into his characters. Among them: a limo driver, a watcher of television, a suitor, a man in a broken-down car, a reader of books, a Ry Cooder superfan, and in the closing number, a wanderer who “notices when people notice things”. The voices of the people, with their ups and downs, their loss and laughter. You can feel the love.

For Bill, preparing to tour for Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest meant considering being away from home for long stretches of time — maybe up to a year, who knew? Feeling his oats, Bill pulled out a few sketches from over the years and touched them up. Before he knew it, he was recording them, and in the shuffle, newer songs started popping up.

It happened fast. Basics were recorded live with Matt Kinsey playing guitars, guitars, guitars and Jaime Zurverza holding it down “and then letting it go” on bass. Drums and horns were brought in for a couple songs. Spirits were high! Six out of the ten were done first take; overdubs, when needed, came equally quickly. Listening, one hears their intuitive cohesion coming together richly behind Bill’s titanic voice spread across the stereo spectrum: the gentle conversation of Bill and Matt’s guitars, the subtle percussion of the bass and drums, and odd appearances of trumpet, woodwind and synth, striking notes both decorous and discordant, sounding for all the world like the naturally occurring sound meant to accompany and express lives lived everywhere.

These are in fact songs meant for other people to sing — but until they do, Bill’s got this. He’s got a secret on this one, and before we go, we don’t mind sharing it with you: he’s figured out how to perfectly place his voice in proximity to your ear. It’s based on the distance from your heart to your brain. Simple! Why don’t more people think like this?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It would appear that Mr. Callahan is entering a super productive time in his life, with not one but two records out in the short space of a year. This follows on from 'Sheepskin..' in many ways, with the more languid, minimal moments echoing those from the gorgeous 2019 outing, but with a little more focus on Callahan's (still) spellbinding vocal drawl. Beautiful stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pigeons
2. Another Song
3. 35
4. Protest Song
5. The Mackenzies
6. Let's Move To The Country
7. Breakfast
8. Cowboy
9. Ry Cooder
10. As I Wander

As you listen to Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest, a feeling of totality, of completeness, steals over you, like a thief in broad daylight. Of course it does – you’re listening to a new Bill Callahan record! The first one in almost six years! What more do you need to complete you?

Or perhaps, after all the time, the obvious needs to be made just a little more explicit?

First, it’s a different kind of record. Bill’s now writing from somewhere beyond his Eagle-Apocalypse-River headspace, and Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest is very much its own beast. The songs are, by and large, shorter, and there are more of them. It took almost all of the previous three albums to add up to that many. Plus, twenty’s a lot of songs! But again, it goes a lot deeper than that.

After Dream River, Bill’s life went through some changes. Good changes – marriage and a kid - but afterwards, it was suddenly harder for him to find the place where the songs came, to make him and these new experiences over again into something to sing. His songs have always been elusive, landing lightly between character study and autobiography, as the singer-songwriter often does. This felt different, though. After 20 years of putting music first, he wasn’t prepared to go away from it completely. Or was he? The lives of a newlywed, a new parent, they have so much in them – but writing and singing, it was his old friend that had helped him along to this place where he’d so happily arrived. Was there room for everybody? While sorting it all out, he worked on songs every day – which meant that for a while, there were lots of days simply confronting the void, as he measured this new life against the ones he’d previously known.

It informed the shape of the album. Moving gradually from reflections upon the old days in “Ballad of The Hulk” and “Young Icarus” to the immediacy of the present moment in “Watching Me Get Married” and “Son of the Sea”, Bill traces the different life lines, casually unwinding knotty contradictions and ambiguities with an arresting stillness. The sense of a life thunderstruck by change infuses Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest– the songs wander from expressions of newfound joy and great contentment to other snapshots, considerations of the not-joy that we all know. Unsettling dream-images and mythic recollections are patiently received; the undertow of the past is resisted, pulling against it instead into the present, accepting revolutions of time and the unconscious as a natural flow.

These transcendent expressions are wedded translucently to the music. Acknowledging the uncertainty in which the songs were assembled, Bill went to the studio alone, unsure if he could find what he was looking for with a band riding along – because who knew how long it would take? This allowed the fluidity of his song-thoughts to be laid down with the right feeling. Once there was guitar and vocals, the other parts came. Matt Kinsey’s guitar partnership is an essential relationship within the music, as is Brian Beattie’s acoustic bass – but also, Bill found himself overdubbing parts himself for the first time in many years, which lent the songs an episodic drift, as if he’s passing through rooms while singing.

In it’s final mix, Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest glows incandescent – an entirely acoustic arrangement, sounds and stories shifting seamlessly, almost like one big song made of a bunch of new stories – the kind that only Bill Callahan thinks to sing.

It’s a joy to hear from this old friend – informing all the lives that we’ve led in the hearing. Good listeners and tired dancers, sing along.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Say what you will about Bill, but he sure knows how to keep writing the tunes doesn't he? A beautiful mix of brittle jazzy progressions, flickering percussion and swooning syncopated (but never jarring) melodic counterpoint show exactly why big Billy is still so present in our record collections and our hearts.

TRACK LISTING

1 Shepherd's Welcome
2 Black Dog On The Beach
3 Angela
4 The Ballad Of The Hulk
5 Writing
6 Morning Is My Godmother
7 747
8 Watch Me Get Married
9 Young Icarus
10 Released
11 What Comes After Certainty
12 Confederate Jasmine
13 Call Me Anything
14 Son Of The Sea
15 Camels
16 Circles
17 When We Let Go
18 Lonesome Valley
19 Tugboats And Tumbleweeds
20 The Beast

“And we’re coming out of dreams / And we’re coming back to dreams” is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on YTI⅃AƎЯ. Right out the gate, he’s standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs.

From the beautiful to the jarring, intrepid explorer Callahan charts a passage through all kinds of territory, pitting dreams of dreams against dreams of reality. When he makes it back to us, his old friends 'n acquaintances, we are reminded how much of a world it can be out there - and in here as well, where we live everyday.

TRACK LISTING

First Bird
Everyway
Bowevil
Partition
Lily
Naked Souls
Coyotes
Drainface
Natural Information
The Horse
Planets
Last One At The Party

Uniquely of the many acts which came to public awareness through the lauded C86 compilation, David Lance Callahan has pursued a career of consistent brilliance and stark originality. After a run of fine albums with The Wolfhounds, outstanding work with Moonshake and collaborations with members of Stereolab and PJ Harvey (among others), Callahan has outdone himself on this long-awaited solo album, the results of which merit the sort of deep dive best explained with with ample time and a quality turntable. Whether English Primitive I is a product of the past year's isolation or of a long-simmering brew only now ready for dissemination is something Callahan has yet to reveal. Whatever its origins, English Primitive I is the work of a massive talent.

Wolfhoundian riffage offered enough ramshackle charm to somewhat obscure Callahan's darker, more penetrating writing. Likewise, Moonshake's musically bi-polar approach disguised his underlying political impulse. Here Callahan's lyricism finally, indelibly, proves him to be among the finest British pop craftsmen. This is his masterwork, a mélange of what has been called "mutant Eastern, West African, folk, blues and post-punk influences" . . . an improbable cross-cultural gumbo, yet one which coalesced into a swirling, kaleidoscopic psychedelia of emotion unlike any other record in this era. As with any recording favouring the avant-garde –works like Balaklava, Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, and The Heart Of The Congos– one might expect that the impact of English Primitive I will be revealed slowly, over a much longer span of time than the the too-often workaday product of today's independent music scene. With this album, Callahan takes his place alongside cult heroes Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and Cathal Coughlan as a prime example of seemingly limitless artistic expression.

TRACK LISTING

1. Born Of The Welfare State Was I 
2. Goatman 
3. Foxboy 
4. She's The King Of My Life 
5. She Passes Through The Night 
6. One Rainy September 
7. Always

The follow-up to last year’s first volume, English Primitive II continues the themes introduced previously in a harder, more electric and psychedelic style.

The songs were mostly recorded during the same sessions but, if EP I showcased the ‘songs of innocence’, this new set comprises ‘songs of experience’. Callahan's lyrical themes here are frequently the sleaze and corruption of our ‘betters’, the intentional and unintentional brutality meted out on those weaker and the sometimes perverse ways in which this happens. There are moments of reflection among the broken mirrors, but they allow scant solace or reassurance. Dressed in another of Scottish artist Pinkie McClure’s witty and detailed stained glass creations and recorded at home and under a railway arch, EPII rises above its origins and invades the wider world, in all its colour, gritand glory. Each song serves as a monument to its internal tale – in fact, the whole LP is as much a collection of musical short stories as it is an album of songs. Opening with Invisible Man, the impression of a regular person with hidden grievances, biding his time and waiting to lash out is given. Waves of distant samples ebb and fall as the warped guitars swell and crash behind the main themes. We don’t know when this explosion will happen – we only know it will.

A sleazy celebration of Britain’s position as the laundering capital of the world follows in the form of Beautiful Launderette. It’s good that we keep everything nice and clean for the whole planet, isn’t it? Business as usual, keeping the globe turning – that’s our role and we love it. The Parrot rocks like only a prolonged evisceration of governmental mouthpieces and their court stenographers can. It’s a thankless task making sure that the powers that be retain their authority in all things and patrolling the borders of what is allowed to be said and believed, but somebody’s got to do it. If you’re providing a service, you’ll need to present a united front against the grievances of the public, so you’ll need The Scapegoat. Mistakes and accidents can’t be the company’s fault, so you’ll need to pay someone to be publicly and repeatedly sacked to make it appear as if you’re solving problems and getting better. Lessons will be learned, going forward. The disturbing tale of Bear Factory begins side two and is the real-life story of the murder of one of the singer’s primary-school classmates in the 1970s, and true in every detail. The victim’s body was never found but the killer justifiably imprisoned for life. A more ancient scent of death pervades The Burnet Rose. This ground-hugging plant covers the graves of the victims in a seventeenth-century plague village on the Yorkshire coast to this day, commemorating their sacrifices when all around have forgotten. It’s this particular songwriter’s favourite flower. Orgy of the Ancients describes the intimate intricacies of ageing politicians and the press as they decide whether to go to war. In grotesque scenarios worthy of Caligula, they decide the fates of our children. And it’s not even half the truth. To finish, the songwriter looks back to an admired predecessor, when he sets William Blake’s famous poem London in a groovier setting than we’re used to – in the form of London by Blakelight. If London swings, it’s from the Tyburn tree. 

TRACK LISTING

Invisible Man
Beautiful Launderette
The Parrot
The Scapegoat
Bear Factory
The Burnet Rose
Orgy Of The Ancients
London By Blakelight

The Callas is a noisepop band/art collective formed by the artists and brothers Lakis and Aris Ionas. Through the past years they have playfully mixed different disciplines including music, art, performance and film. In 2013 they recorded the new album produced by Jim Sclavunos (Sonic Youth, The Cramps, Lydia Lunch, Grinderman, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds).

They have performed at major festivals and venues such as The Great Escape Festival (UK), Indietracks Festival (UK), Taktfrei Festival (Berlin), Artrocker Magazine (UK), Old Blue Last (UK), Brixton Windmill (UK), The Fly (UK), Club Fandango at The Monarch (UK), Barfly (UK), Sala Apolo (Barcelona) and with bands such as Grinderman, Au Revoir Simone, You Say Party! We Say Die!, The Wedding Present, Television Personalities, Stereo Total, The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club.

The band The Callas is the tip of an artistic enterprise that has seen the brothers invited to exhibit their artwork and perform live at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), Family Business gallery (NY, USA), Dakis Joannou DESTE foundation, Faggionato Fine Art (London, UK), Athens Biennial, AMP gallery, Yinka Shonibare Space(London, UK), The Breeder gallery, ATOPOS cvc etc.

TRACK LISTING

1. Lustlands
2. Anger
3. East Beat
4. Black Leather Books
5. I Hate You But I Like You
6. Disaster
7. That's You
8. I Wonder
9. Octopus Love
10. Am I Vertical?

Callen & Moor are half of Stockport band The Spinning Fields. Thier debut CD, "Downtime", as the name suggests, was recorded in the 'downtime' from their commitments to The Spinning Fields and other projects such as Vermin and Theme Park. Initially very lo-fi in approach, recordings became more sophisticated with the arrival of sound engineer and multi-instrumentalist The Bonsai Whale, aka Matt Crawford, who is now a permanent fixture in the Callen & Moor live setup. Musically ranging through bouncy alt country, punky blues and sheer experimentalism, "Downtime" veers from quirky lyrical observation to what John Moor terms 'serious walks on the dark side'. Additional keyboards, guitar, sax and vocals on the album were provided by the Spinning Fields' Dominic Kearney.

Terry Callier's 'What Color Is Love' (1973) is an essential soul-jazz album that should belong in anyone's record collection. This record was produced by Charles Stepney, whose work with Cadet / Chess records, Rotary Connection and Earth, Wind & Fire earned him popular acclaim. Filled with soul, funk, rock, folk, jazz, and even classical influences, vocalist Callier can be heard on this album to the most intriguing heights.

"Dancing Girl" opens the album with Stepney's majestic orchestration. Songs like "What Color Is Love" and "Ho Tsing Mee", an elegant anti-war prayer of confusion, somehow avoid clichés or take them to another level.

Callier's passionate voice captures the sweeping drama of the human condition. A lost romantic amid "concrete frond yards," this album is a must-have for any music connoisseur.

STAFF COMMENTS

David says: It's blue Terry, everyone knows that...

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Dancing Girl
2. What Color Is Love
3. You Goin' Miss Your Candyman

Side B
1. Just As Long As We're In Love
2. Ho Tsing Mee (A Song Of The Sun)
3. I'd Rather Be With You
4. You Don't Care

Kirin J Callinan has his own theory that the three great Australian bands, the Mt. Rushmore of Oz if you will, all have a criminal aspect to them: AC/DC = gang of outcasts raising hell; INXS = sexual deviancy, lasciviousness; and Nick Cave = murderous poet. Kirin has elements of all three, and in time, he will be the fourth face on that rock.

A guitarist, singer, songwriter and solo performer born in Australia, Callinan is a child of the 1980s. He is known for his confrontational live performances, haunting compositions and wild guitar playing. He is a performer by nature, very charismatic, and very unafraid to bare his soul.

A well kept secret within Australia’s underground and a personal favourite to his contemporaries the world over, Kirin releases his debut solo album, ‘Embracism’, via Siberia Records / Terrible Records in partnership with XL Recordings.

The album was produced by Kim Moyes (The Presets) at his home studio in Sydney and mixed by Chris Taylor (CANT, Grizzly Bear).

Musical legends from opposite sides of the world come together on Hell Yeah's next EP as Japan's Calm and Finnish musician Jimi Tenor collaborate on big city takes. It features two new singles as well as remixes from the celebrated tapes and Belfast's best-kept secret, The Vendetta Suite.

This most satisfying of eps came together when the psychedelic space-jazz-funk king and noted musician, composer and producer Jimi Tenor was in tour in Japan. Label head Marco arranged for him to head into Calm's studio in Kawasaki, Tokyo, and real magic happened.

'Big city takes' is gloriously lush, with serene chords, delicate flutes and organic percussion. Tenor's airy vocal brings the soul as an intimate and late-night groove emerges to melt your heart.

Then come two remixes from tapes. The first is powered by dusty old-school drum breaks. They're doused in subtle euphoria with a nimble bassline down low, while the second one is stripped right back to a pulsing rhythm and killer phased bass. Spread chords bring sunrise feelings to this most colourful of grooves.

On the flip side, Calm offers a version of 'Time & Space' that is nearly eight minutes of exquisitely blissed-out downtempo. Chords ripple like waves, flutes flutter like birds and the whole thing is filled with the joys of a new spring day. The remix comes from The Vendetta Suite, a label regular and under-the-radar talent who is defining his native Northern Irish scene with his fresh fusion sounds. His version brings a new age ambiance to post-rave Balearic comedown. It's one that douses you in life-affirming synths as drums gently persuade you to sway along.

TRACK LISTING

A1.  Big City Takes (Original Mix)
A2.  Big City Takes (Tapes Remix 1)
A3.  Big City Takes (Tapes Remix 5)
B1.  Time & Space (Calm's Version)
B2.  Time & Space (Vendetta Suite Remix)

Following on from the warm reception to Hell Yeah and Music Conception reissuing Calm's cult Before album, the labels have come together once more to offer up a reissue of the Japanese master's highly sought-after long player Moonage Electric Ensemble. The hard-to-find original has been given an all-new mixdown from original stem files and then re-mastered by Calm himself, and the double LP will also come with a bonus 12" featuring his very own Daydream Dubs plus an obi-strip and original artwork by FJD.

The blissful yet soul-stirring Moonage Electric Ensemble, which landed first in 1999, was Kiyotaka Fukagawa's stunning sophomore album and the one that kept the bar high following his debut Shadow of the Earth. It investigated all new worlds of future jazz, ambient and downtempo and has since become a cult classic that often fetches three figures on secondhand markets. He has released over 18 albums since including Before which was reissued in 2022, though Moonage Electric Ensemble remains a favourite with those who enjoy the most accomplished and innovative sounds from the first wave of chillout.

This escapist charmer opens with the suspensory synths and piano keys of 'Unseen Small Steps' featuring spoken words from Dan Gamble, then 'Light Year' has gently tumbling rhythms and shimming synth moving about the soothing mix. 'Noon At The Moon' brings gorgeously fizzing future jazz drums and mellifluous piano playing full of subtle joy, and 'The Other Side Of The Moon' then layers up melancholic chords and chunkier rhythms that are detailed with gorgeous persuasive details and mystic flutes. 'Tsukiyo' is a new age charmer with paddy hand drums and romantic interplay between sax and trumpet, 'Between Worlds' is an ambient interlude with distant winds blowing and intimate whispers from Gamble before closer 'Authentic Love Song' rides on dusty trip hop breaks as lazy piano chords melt the heart and Gamble serves up another aloof monologue.

This is another welcome reissue of a sublime album that is not only one of Calm's finest but also a true gem in the wider world of downtempo music.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Unseen Small Steps
A2. Light Years
A3. Noon At The Moon
A4. The Other Side Of The Moon
B1. Tsukiyo
B2. Between Worlds
B3. Authentic Love Song
B4. OasisC1Light Years
C2. Noon At The Moon
C3. The Other Side Of The Moon
D1. Tsukiyo
D2. Authentic Love Song
D3. Oasis

You know it’s going to be a heavy record when DJ / collector Mr Thing asks you to keep a look out for a copy on your next digging trip to Brazil. Add on top of that, being sampled by Madlib on the track ‘Curls’ on his Madvillain album!

Taken from Waldir Calmon’s ‘Waldir Calmon E Seus Multisons’ album on Copacabana (1970), from looking at this unassuming record cover featuring a middle-aged man sporting an impressive pair of glasses you wouldn’t expect it to become the fabric to one of the songs from the iconic ‘Madvillain’ album.

But... like many things in life, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. ‘Airport Love Theme’, like its name suggests, falls into full-on lounge territory. It’s feelgood music made to be the soundtrack for a utopian world that never really was. Yet behind the silky-smooth groove is an addictive earworm waiting to be heard. ‘Afro Son’ taken from the same album, pushes things in a different direction towards a sound that is more firmly rooted in the Brazilian tradition.

This quirky 60’s-breakbeat-funk groove is reminiscent of French artist Jean Jacques Perrey’s ‘E.V.A.’, also from 1970, in its melody and backbeat, where the Moog synthesizer of Perrey is replaced with a more orchestrated sound by Calmon. This track is magical, cinematic and breakbeat-laden with a hidden unknown exoticism. Waldir Calmon had an active career in music working from the ‘50s right up until his passing in 1982.

His career started early, forming his first ensemble at the age of fourteen, originally working in bands in nightclubs and writing jingles. He progressed in the early ‘50s to a long-running career working in television. In addition to his television work, he had success with his recording vocation, mixing in the same musical circles as greats such as Tom Jobi, Jo o Gilberto and Doris Monteiro.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Breakbeat exotica and lounge grooves abound on the Madlib sampled 'Airport Love Theme', while it's all about psychedelic soul on the far out flip "Afro Som".

TRACK LISTING

Airport Love Theme
Afro Som

Limited edition sampler from Japanese producer CALM. These two tracks have been taken from the Japan only Music Conception release 'Quiet Music Under The Moon' that came out early 2023 . Featuring his signature ambient musical meditations. Mukatsuku has worked with Calm several times over the years releasing music on Exceptional Records plus compilations on Fuego (Moshi Moshi) & Kriztal (Sakura Aural Bliss) but this is the first time to release his output on Mukatsuku. Limited to 400 only hand-numbered copies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Moon Shower
2. Oyasumi, Ohayo

Ann Calvi’s debut for Domino is set to be one of the most talked about records of next year.

Brian Eno has championed her as the most visionary female artiste since Patti Smith, Nick Cave has just taken her out around Europe as special guest of Grinderman, and Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey’s right hand studio man) has produced the music.

An inspired guitarist influenced by Django Reinhardt as much as Jimi Hendrix, and with vocals inspired by Nina Simone and Mariah Callas, Anna Calvi’s music is a passionate and incredibly original mix.

The live shows with her permanent three piece band are already wowing audiences across the land.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Ridiculously striking, powerful debut, seemingly from nowhere. If you like all the influences mentioned below, and throw in a bit of gothiness (now apparently ok to like and reference!?) and even early rock 'n'roll, then you're going to love this record.

The second studio album from Mercury-nominated UK artist Anna Calvi.

Following on from her self titled, critically acclaimed, Top 40 debut, ‘One Breath’ is a bold, confident progression in terms of textures and emotion.

Produced by John Congleton at Blackbox Studios, France and mixed in Texas.

Anna Calvi will release a 10-year Anniversary edition of her self-titled debut album via Domino. An astonishingly confident record; ‘Anna Calvi’ showcases the unique strengths of her songwriting, singing and virtuoso guitar-playing, all jumping out of the speaker together. Calvi drew on the ghosts of Nina Simone and Maria Callas for influence to create a stunningly modern sound.

To date, Anna Calvi has released three studio albums (‘Anna Calvi’, ‘One Breath’ and ‘Hunter’), a collaborative EP with David Byrne (‘Strange Weather’) and the most recent ‘Hunted’, a seven-track reworking of ‘Hunter’. Additionally, Calvi wrote and performed the score for Season 5 of BBC One’s Peaky Blinders and wrote the music for the opera The Sandman, directed by Robert Wilson.

Anna is the first solo artist to achieve three consecutive Mercury Prize nominations and has also received a Brit Award nomination. Throughout her career, Calvi has worked with Brian Eno, Marianne Faithfull, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joe Talbot (IDLES), Dave Okumu (The Invisible), Johnny Flynn, Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Courtney Barnett.

The LP, which includes the likes of ‘Desire’, ‘Blackout’, ‘Rider To The Sea’ and ‘Suzanne And I’, is reissued for the first time, available to independent retailers on deluxe red vinyl. It also features brand new cover artwork and an 8-page booklet containing previously unseen photographs, plus digital download code.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rider To The Sea
2. No More Words
3. Desire
4. Suzanne And I
5. First We Kiss
6. The Devil
7. Blackout
9. I’ll Be Your Man
10. Morning Light
11. Love Won’t Be Leaving

In the summer of 2018, Anna Calvi released her third album Hunter. On the album, she explored sexuality and breaking the laws of gender conformity. Following a stellar 18 months, which saw Calvi write her first television score (for Peaky Blinders) and receive her third consecutive Mercury Prize nomination (the first solo artist to achieve this feat), Calvi has now crafted a stunning reworking of Hunter into Hunted. Revisiting her first recordings for Hunter, Calvi found they offered an intimate and private view of the songs’ initial intentions. Distilled to their bare essence on Hunted: her masterful guitar playing and formidable vocals, Calvi then asked Courtney Barnett, Joe Talbot (IDLES), Charlotte Gainsbourg and Julia Holter to collaborate with her and further transform the songs.

On Hunted, Calvi said, “During a break from touring I went back and listened to the first recordings I ever made of ‘Hunter’. These recordings capture the very moment I first wrote these songs, and recorded them on my own, in my attic studio. I find something especially intimate about sharing these most private recordings with my favourite singers and asking them to lend their voices and artistic sensibility. Courtney Barnett is an amazing artist. Her voice and guitar playing together are mind blowing. Her ability to connect the profound to the smallest moments of human experience is the unique talent of a true artist.”

On working together, Barnett said, “Anna is a completely awe-inspiring performer, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her onstage. I love her songwriting for its beautiful and perfect balance between aggression and tenderness.” More raw-sounding than their original incarnations, the tracks on Hunted shine under the light of a different lens, one that brings the innate fragility of the compositions to the forefront and exquisitely melds together the dichotomy of the hunter and the hunted, the primal and the beautiful, the vulnerable and the strong.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The superb turnaround of Anna Calvi's 2018 LP 'Hunter' into 'Hunted' sees Calvi collaborating with a selection of some of the greatest names in modern indie music, and adds futher gravitas to the stunningly written and brilliantly performed pieces on show. Deep and soulful, swimming with gothcic drive and singularly enchanting, this is a perfect companion or a wonderful listen on it's own.

TRACK LISTING

Swimming Pool (feat. Julia Holter)
Hunter
Eden (feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg)
Away
Don’t Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy (feat. Courtney Barnett)
Wish (feat. Joe Talbot/IDLES)
Indies Or Paradise

Hunter, the third album from Anna Calvi, is the embodiment of the feeling of truly letting go. For the art-rock singer-songwriter it was a catharsis, and an opportunity to be more truthful than she ever had been been before. Revered in the British music industry since she emerged in 2011 (BRIT Award and twice Mercury Prize nominated), she has teamed up with esteemed producer Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Grinderman), Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Martyn Casey (The Bad Seeds) to bring this galvanising record to life.

Hunter is an album of visceral guitars and vocals, exploring sexualityand breaking the laws of gender conformity. Passionate subject matter calls for passionate delivery, and on Hunter, Calvi pushes the limits of her guitar and her voice beyond anything she’s recorded before. It was important to Calvi that the record was as vulnerable as it is strong; as beautiful as it is ugly. To be the hunter and the hunted.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Calvi is at once arresting and mesmerising, mixing evocative gothic symphonics and soaring melodic waves with a brittle undercurrent, flipping from shimmering synth pop to dark bubbling ambient in the blink of an eye. As immediately appreciable musically as it is conceptually exceptional.

TRACK LISTING

01. As A Man
02. Hunter
03. Don’t Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy
04. Indies Or Paradise
05. Swimming Pool
06. Alpha
07. Chain
08. Wish
09. Away
10. Eden 

Anna Calvi’s captivating and atmospheric compositions, her first foray into scores, for seasons 5 and 6 of Peaky Blinders, the BBC’s record-breaking TV show, will now be released via Domino Soundtracks. Peaky Blinders: Season 5 & 6 (Original Score) comprises 37 tracks over the course of a double LP.

Talking about her work on the score, Calvi says “Composing for Peaky Blinders was about atmosphere and space. There’s so much nuance when it comes to scoring to picture. It’s more about what you leave out than what you leave in. I had to let the voice of the actors do the talking but find ways of bringing out the emotion within that. I became completely obsessed with Tommy Shelby, I dreamt about him every night whilst I was working on the scores, I had to really inhabit the show.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. You're Not God
2. Tommy's Requiem #1
3. Tommy's Plan
4. Death Is A Kindness
5. Black Tuesday
6. I Don't Like The Life
7. Moseley #1
8. Ruby's Birthday
9. Grace
10. There Ain't No Grave
11. We Don't Like The Life
12. The Execution
13. Do What The Voices Tell You
14. Moseley #2
15. Retribution
16. Reckoning
17. Tommy's Requiem #2
18. Miquelon
19. Esme
20. Under The Maple Tree
21. Gina
22. Ain’t No Grave
23. The Sanatorium
24. Mosley
25. Where Will You Go
26. Pledge Your Allegiance
27. Arthur
28. Esme’s Dream
29. Ruby Has A Fever
30. Jail And Perfume
31. Michael’s Plan
32. Red Right Hand
33. The Eleventh Hour
34. Opium
35. Goodbye Billy
36. Legacy
37. Tommy’s Final Requiem

Born and raised in Philadelphia, gospel singer, songwriter, arranger, pianist, band leader and producer Calvin Carr (now a Minister of the Gospel) possessed excellent ears for music at a very young age. The sounds of music that shaped his life were the sounds of his early church singing experience. He began playing the piano at the age of 9, continued his work in music throughout high school, composing, singing in different churches, learned how to executive produce and ended up working for the TCS Music Company under the direction of its founder Mr. Tony Carter, displaying the talents of Philadelphia’s local artists such as Gabriel Hardeman Delegation, The Young Delegation, Little Sammy & The Flying Cloud Jrs., Gwen Carter, The Collins Sisters, Brockington Singers…

In 1978 Calvin released the now scarce and relatively unknown “Without Christ” 45 on the TCS “Philadelphia United Records“ subsidiary. Taking the rhythms of disco, tonality of soul and energy of gospel, Calvin cooked up a seriously spiritual blast of raw dance floor energy. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Eyes closed and hands in the air, this gospel killer has spirit fingers written all over it...Church MFs!

New Parisian label, Disques Messager aims to present rarities and sought-after gems of the international rare groove scene. A mission which begins rather well, with the official reissue of these two stirring titles by Brazilian singer and composer Cristina Camargo.

Native of Rio De Janeiro, Cristina Camargo had quite a short career, releasing only 2 albums in 1980 and 1981, but still enough to collaborate with some of the best composers, musicians and producers at that time. Her first self-titled album was therefore produced by Robson Jorge & Lincoln Oliveti and recorded with some of the finest musicians.

“Moral Tem Hora” comes from this same LP and is a perfect example of the unique alchemy that emerged when disco and boogie invaded the Brazilian music scene. A rare and irresistible boogle-disco killer, composed by famous brothers, Marcos and Paulo Sérgio Valle and containing a clever arrangement which keeps you hooked till the very end.

On side B comes “Minas Do Rei Salomão”, a more chilled-out title extracted from Cristina’s 2nd album, “Santa Maravilha”. With its funky slapped bass, airy keyboards and the sweet vocals of Cristina, the song seems made to sip a nice cocktail at Ipanema.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Effortless glory from this lesser known Brazilian star. Perfect for sauntering around without a care in the world when you're on your jolly bobs.

TRACK LISTING

Moral Tem Hora
Minas Do Rei Salomão

Guitarist Ken Camden returns for his third solo album, continuing his explorations to seek out new techniques and sounds from the electric guitar. By utilizing both a steel slide and e-bow technique, Camden has moved into micro-tonal territory to bridge the textural gap between guitar and synthesizer while examining their inherent differences.

The palette is further broadened by introducing an organic vocal sampling machine described as a Vocaltron. Much like a Mellotron, vocal samples (contributed by Emily Elhaj and Angel Olsen) are chromatically organized in half steps from the lowest note to the highest possible. Each set is specific to the contributor's range and each note is unedited to keep all original characteristics of that particular individual's voice. This organized organic information adds a contrast to the electric guitar and synthesizer arrangements on the album.

The development of all of these systems gives Dream Memory a diversity throughout its tracks while maintaining an atmospheric bond that weaves the ideas into a thematic whole. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Adenosine
2. Time Bend
3. Renewal
4. Curiosity
5. Melatonin
6. Dream Memory
7. Brain Work
8. Asleep At The Wheel

This is the second solo album from Ken Camden who lives and works in Chicago. He also plays in the Implodes sound quartet.

Space travel is the dream of many and the reality of few. Since Yuri Gagarin ?rst shed the bonds of earth gravity in 1961, only about 500 humans have made the trip beyond the atmosphere.

Ken Camden travels to space while still grounded on terra ?rma. His vessel of choice is a guitar and some effects with which he journeys on fantastical expeditions and surveys the biggest territory of all, the one between your ears.

The glimmering sound ?elds he forms could be a soundtrack to an epic 60?s science-?ction ?lm, or a long forgotten grade school educational ?lm strip explaining how humans would be living on Mars early in the 21st century.

Camden?s narrative rejects the dominant dystopian view of the future and posits that there are great voyages yet to be made in inner and outer space.

The album forms a gravity-free environment in which the listener is suspended, enhancing an aural excursion to the outer reaches of the musical Kosmos.

Following up an instrumental concept album ("The Snow Goose") Camel returned to a more song based release with their 1976 album "Moonmadness". Producer Rhett Davies gave them a punchier sound and the album was their biggest seller in America thus far. Now remastered with five extra tracks and new sleevenotes.

You'd be hard-pushed to find an album with as many well-crafted, supremely catchy pop songs as this. Original yet soothingly familiar, these tunes manage to break your heart and take you to the top in equal measure. They're written and sung by Tracyanne Campbell and there can't be a sweeter, more believable voice in pop right now. It's like she's your best friend, singing in your ear, but what she's singing is the pages of her diary! This is actually Camera Obscura’s 4th album, but the others just led up to this one; this is the one where they’ve distilled their thing. The production’s perfect too: Concrete’s producer Jari Haapalainen perfectly capturing the old-school indie classicist vibe. Every song's a gem, there's not one duffer, but the gorgeous slowie "James" and the euphoric, horn-driven "Honey In The Sun" deserve a special mention. Mancunian legend Paul Morley's a massive fan too: that's good enough for me!

TRACK LISTING

1. French Navy
2. The Sweetest Thing
3. You Told A Lie
4. Away With Murder
5. Swans
6. James
7. Careless Love
8. My Maudlin Career
9. Forests And Sands
10. Other Towns And Cities
11. Honey In The Sun

"Let's Get Out Of This Country" is a master class in intelligent, melodic 'retro-modern pop'. Producer Jari Happalainen (The Concretes, Ed Harcourt) has shaped a cohesive collection of classic songs which are, at turns upbeat ("If Looks Could Kill"), downbeat ("Country Mile"), hooky ("I Need All The Friends I Can Get") and epic ("Razzle Dazzle Rose").

"Let's Get Out Of This Country" is the album of maturity, the album of a group that has a solid international position and a third album that will immortalize them. It was recorded in Sweden and produced by Jari Haapalainen (Ed Harcourt, The Concretes), and with it, Tracyanne Campbell and company made the definitive leap with their arrangements, energy, harmonies and composition. Some of the musicians that recorded the strings had recently toured with Brian Wilson and Arthur Lee & Love. The album's collaborators incl- ude Victoria Bergsman from The Concretes, Britta Persson and members of Swedish groups like The Tourettes, Laakso and Speedmarket Avenue. And we get "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken", "Tears For Affairs", "Razzle Dazzle Rose" and "Let's Get Out Of This Country" to confirm this. And of course, they toured the entire world, were heard on "Grey's Anatomy", and then signed to 4AD.

TRACK LISTING

01 Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken
02 Tears For Affairs
03 Come Back Margaret
04 Dory Previn
05 The False Contender
06 Let’s Get Out Of This Country
07 Country Mile
08 If Looks Could Kill
09 I Need All The Friends I Can Get
10 Razzle Dazzle Rose

Look to the East, Look to the West, the new album by Camera Obscura, is a revelation. The Tracyanne Campbell-led outfit, reuniting with producer Jari Haapalainen (Let’s Get Out of This Country, My Maudlin Career), have crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort to date.

It is also the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscura’s career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and friend Carey Lander (to whom the penultimate track “Sugar Almond” is addressed), the band went into an extended hiatus. They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they announced their return, having been invited to perform as part of Belle & Sebastian’s 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow. Donna Maciocia (keys and vocals) joined founding members Kenny McKeeve (guitar and vocals), Gavin Dunbar (bass), and Lee Thomson (drums and percussion) for those shows and has since become a regular songwriting partner of Campbell’s.

Recorded in the same room where Queen wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Look to the East, Look to the West feels big, a widescreen reframing of Camera Obscura’s sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go back to basics there are no string or brass arrangements, with more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous albums. The tinges of country and soul that give Camera Obscura’s baroque take on pop music its bittersweet edge have never been more apparent guitars shimmer into the distance, keys haunt, and Campbell’s voice searches for the heart, reflecting on love, loss, and the passage of time.

Lead single “Big Love” relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim Davidson. It’s a Nashville Sound heartbreaker, tackling the complexity of wanting to rekindle a bad relationship with Campbell’s uncanny ability to render the past: “It was a big love, she said / That’s why it took ten years to get her out of her head,” she begins.

“We’re Going to Make It in a Man’s World” was co-written with Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmon’s 2021 film Icarus (After Amelia). (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look to the West’s cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who was on the cover of Camera Obscura’s debut, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being women in the music industry, somehow floating over Davidson’s

pedal steel and Maciocia’s keys. “The Light Nights” is a swooning song propelled by a western shuffle and killer guitar, striking a balance between a particularly good honky-tonk joint’s jukebox and a lost gem of California pop music waiting to be discovered in a 7” bin.

Look to the East, Look to the West is the sound of a band that has grown more confident in its sound and purpose than ever. It is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative, an album that completely rearranges the listener’s emotional core, leaving them sad and exhilarated at the same time. Camera Obscura’s catalog is replete with songs people point to as life-changing, songs that will stick with them all their lives. Look to the East, Look to the West has 11 of them; take your pick. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Liberty Print
2. We’re Going To Make It In A Man’s World
3. Big Love
4. Only A Dream
5. The Light Nights
6. Sleepwalking
7. Baby Huey (Hard Times)
8. Denon
9. Pop Goes Pop
10. Sugar Almond
11. Look To The East, Look To The West.

Camera Obscura are a seven piece from Glasgow, who started releasing records in the late 90s on the Andmoresound label. Afer a year of touring and recording, they've now released the follow-up to their Geoff Allen (Arab Strap, Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian) produced debut album, and the single "Eighties Fan" which was produced by Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian. On "Underachievers, Please Try Harder" they've broadened their sound by bringing in new organs and a Fender Rhodes piano, and trying out 12-string acoustic, banjo and autoharp on some tracks, even utilising a Stylophone.

"Underachievers Please Try Harder" is the album on which Stuart Murdoch continued showing his support for the band with the cover photo; the album produced by Geoff Allan (Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, The Delgados, Arab Strap And Belle & Sebastian); the album that quickly surpassed 100,000 copies sold, a number that causes a bit of vertigo nowadays; the album that put them at the top of indie lists in the United States, and that was included on an episode of our beloved "Gilmore Girls".

TRACK LISTING

01 Suspended From Class
02 Keep It Clean
03 A Sisters Social Agony
04 Teenager
05 Before You Cry
06 Your Picture
07 Number One Son
08 Let Me Go Home
09 Books Written For Girls
10 Knee Deep At The National Pop League
11 Lunar Sea

Started as the so called 'Krautrock Guerrilla' in 2012, six years later the Berlin combo Camera are releasing their fourth full-length album. Customarily associated with the likes of NEU! and La Dusseldorf it is time to allow Camera to break free of the krautrock tradition and accept that they are very much doing their own thing now. Motto: "It's not repetition, it’s discipline"

TRACK LISTING

1. Gizmo
2. Patrouille
3. Ciao Cacao
4. Himmelhilf
5. Cosm
6. Pacific One
7. Nicenstein
8. Super 8
9. Feuerwerk

The beat hammers like the pulse of a pair of lovers on the run from a gang of racist thugs - the sound is manic, but from it speaks a seemingly insurmountable inner strength. This arch of tension is home to Camera. The Berlin band is rightly compared with icons of seventies Krautrock such as Neu! and La Düsseldorf, with a tight and driving sound, yet they are still somehow unpredictable. Hardly any other band understands how to mutate tiny musical nuances into volcanic eruptions like they do. Camera is a motor running at full throttle, where an explosion could occur at any second. Once you have embarked on this crazy journey, you will be fascinated by the alternating current somewhere between a flash flood and roller coaster running off the rails. The cascades of sound convey a blurry image of a boundless desire to revolt, with each blink of an eye threatening to end in purgatory, yet it is damned near indestructible.

Michael Drummer is the ethereal Indian paleface who pummels his drums at every show as if we're in the midst of a 17th Century incarnational ritual. In Steffen Kahles, who hails from the world of film music, he has found the musical partner he needed to enrich the tribal kraut beat with diverse motifs and bold sounds. On the third Camera album "Phantom of Liberty", we hear the clever use of playful sounds such as synths that beam us back into the Commodore 64 computer games of 1984; or slightly cranky keyboard pads, as if created by deliberately manipulating the speed of an old tape machine. With "Phantom of Liberty" Camera show that they have become more mature and complex without losing any of their tremendous energy.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: This third album from Berlin trio Camera continues along a similar, if slightly more meandering, Kraut-rock path as their previous releases, a path already well trodden by the likes of Neu! and La Düsseldorf. The scope of their sound has expanded this time around though, and along with the pummelling drums and motorik rhythms we expect, there are a whole host of keyboard experiments going on: fluid synth washes, spacey swooshes, bleeps and squiggles. At times it sounds like they're soundtracking an 80s computer game, and at others the eerie electronics would be the perfect backdrop to a sci-fi movie. They've definitely upped their game on this album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Affenfaust
2. Fröhlichkeit
3. Festus
4. Nevernine
5. Ildefons
6. Reindenken / Raus
7. Tjamahal
8. Tribal Mango

With the band’s tenth anniversary in their viewfinder, CAMERA release “Prosthuman”, their fifth studio album. As befits an age in which realities can change in the blink of an eye, from one day to the next, the Berlin band never tire of changing themselves, their music or personnel.

As Karlheinz Stockhausen noted: “New methods change the experience. New experiences change man.”

Taking this as their lead, Michael Drummer (the drummer) and CAMERA surprise us once more on “Prosthuman” as they reinvent and reformulate their sound without sacrificing the project’s identity which has matured over the past decade. Less surprising is the fact that some record stores give CAMERA their own section, alongside Krautrock pioneers like NEU!, Can and La Düsseldorf. “Emotional Detox”, the predecessor to this album, was distinguished by the presence of two keyboard virtuosos (Steffen Kahles and CAMERA founder member Timm Brockmann). Finding replacements for “Prosthuman” was, as Michael Drummer stresses, “a difficult process.” The two keyboardists had – in different creative periods – formed the backbone of a band structure otherwise prone to fluctuations. Decisive input came from an unlikely source: Tim Schroeder, who first teamed up with CAMERA as a performance and video artist on their six-week tour of the USA in 2017.

Over the course of various jams and recording sessions, he was able to offer ample proof of his synthesizers skills. Alex Kozmidi, a musician and composer with a flair for experimentation, completed the triumvirate on guitar, with Michael Drummer adding his own guitar riffs here and there. Change and friction can be useful allies in pursuit of creativity, something to which Drummer has grown accustomed as the only ever-present member of CAMERA. The pleasures and pain of isolation – suddenly a mass phenomenon in pandemic times – are well known to the quasi frontman of the group. Over the years, he has spent many hours alone or with a shifting cast of co-musicians in the band’s basement studio, beneath a former factory site in a less than hip southern district of Berlin. Virus-induced social distancing and quarantine measures that came into force during the recording process (June 2019 to June 2020) thus posed no great challenge.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's always a delight when something hits the shelves from Bureau B. This time sees Camera revisiting their familiar heady kosmische groove, albeit with different staff. Drummer and Schroeder here perfect the warmingly organic duality of synthesiser and live percussion, resulting in a fluid but cohesive build and release narrative and a hypnotic, rhythmic nod.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1.Kartoffelstampf
2.Alar Alar
3.Prosthuman / Apptime
4.Überall Teilchen / Teilchen Überall
5.Freundschaft

Side B
1.El Ley
2.Schmwarf
3.A2
4.Chords4 / Kurz Vor
5.Harmonite

Exclusive Dinked Bonus 12”:
A2 – Lloyd Cole Remix
Schmwarf – The Telescopes Threw A Way Through Experimental Health Version
Alar Alar – Love-Songs Remix
Prosthuman – Extnddntwrk Remix (Andrew Robert Lindsay Fearn Of Sleaford Mods)
Freundschaft – Dead Skeletons Planet Book Remix (Ryan Van Kriedt, Henrik Björnsson)

Krautrock, that perennial badge of hipness. The ultimate honorary title for repetitive music, as played by Camera. In fact, the Berlin band's penchant for playing without permission in underground stations or other public places (in the gents at the Echo awards ceremony) has seen them dubbed "Krautrock Guerilla". Camera are not seeking to emulate the sound of older Krautrock bands, in any case. Nor have they been listening incessantly to NEU! or Can.

"Perhaps we just have the same angle of approach" suggests keyboard player Timm Brockmann, "we start playing and simply go with the flow." Motorik-driven, energetic stretches laced with psychedelic overtones rise up from keyboards, drums and guitars, much as they did for the pioneers of German Krautrock some forty years ago. On the back of "Radiate!", their debut album in 2012, Camera extended their range to Russia and the USA.

Whilst "Radiate!" was entirely the product of studio improvisation, "Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide" sees Timm Brockmann and drummer Michael Drummer revisit and revise jams supplemented by various different guitarists and other guest musicians, exploring the possibilities of the studio as a reflection loop. Without losing sight of their overriding impulse to improvise-which is, after all, the essence of Camera.

'My name is Alex Cameron and I won't waste your time. When you're talking about me and my business partner, Roy Molloy, you're talking about the online cowboys in the wild-west days of the World Wide Web. And if you want to know what we're really about just look at all the things you wish you'd done differently. All the things you stopped yourself from doing on account of the fear of failure, or rejection. Weigh that up against your ambitions. Think about your work ethic. We're reclaiming failure as an act of progress. An act of learning. Something to celebrate.

A word's meaning can change depending on who utters the thing; and so we present characters - shapes are morphed and stories are delivered. This is a collection of 4-minute tales written to provide you with insight into the inner workings of failed ambitions and self-destruction. Unedited, uncensored, and without inhibition. I've learned to reveal what I want to unlearn. I cast a light on the darkness and in doing so understand love and compassion. Fear is to be confronted, and to learn strictly requires failure - over and over. Celebrate failure with Jumping The Shark.'

TRACK LISTING

1 Happy Ending
2 Gone South
3 Real Bad Lookin
4 The Comeback
5 She's Mine
6 Internet
7 Mongrel
8 Take Care Of Business

“Up until 2014 I was an investigator’s assistant in a public law office. I can’t tell you exactly what my job was on account of I signed a shut your mouth agreement around the time I quit for stress related reasons. But what I can say is that I dealt with corruption and badness perpetrated at the highest levels of authority, daily. I clocked all these leads and I made a file. Because these aren’t things you keep in the dark. You shine a light on the badness and you strive to understand it.

“From a dossier on all things delicate and beautiful and sadly human. Crimes of passion and victims of love. All contained in 10 hot songs. Who’s the culprit? I’ve got my inklings and you can get your own. But first you need to listen to the thing, take it all in, stick photos to your walls and connect them with string, measure footprints in the yard, wear a suit made of reeds, track the migration patterns of birds, intercept whispered transmissions, learn to eat spiders with a hunting knife, sleep in air ducts, make the case.

“Here it is, my album: ‘Forced Witness’.” - Alex Cameron

Album features guest appearances by Brandon Flowers (The Killers), Angel Olsen and Weyes Blood.

TRACK LISTING

Candy May
Country Figs
Runnin’ Outta Luck
Stranger’s Kiss (duet With Angel Olsen)
True Lies
Studmuffin96
The Chihuahua
The Hacienda
Marlon Brando
Politics Of Love

“Here we have the final entry into our Live In San Francisco series: an intimate evening with Alex [Cameron] and his indispensable sax man, Roy Molloy (beard in briefcase) performing at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, a very classy and lovingly maintained venue originally built in 1907 on Market Street, just a pube or two into the Castro District. “I was first introduced to Alex Cameron by Adam Beris, a real swell fellow who’s been drawing Castle Faces for us for years. He asked if I had heard of this “Suicide meets sad Springsteen” act and showed me the mysterious Geocities-style website (complete with shady porn ads). I was immediately hooked on the skeletal throb, the stark portraits of hard luck losers, the ego-maniacal squares, and the swagger on this prosthetically wrinkled Australian song and dance man. On a paid website, as he reminds us. Both sharp-witted and steeped in thespian courage, this is exactly what the world needed in this hungry, hungry time we live in. We got in touch, things led to other things, and when Alex was opening for Oh Sees at the Chapel in San Francisco we hatched a plan to make a live record, over white wine spritzers (as all the best deals are inked). “Al and Roy are the real deal, folks…and this wasn’t to be just any old show. I was determined to do something a little special, and I got the idea from working on John’s book of poster art (Exploded Globes) to bill it as a semi-formal, encourage people to ‘get dressed up and messed up’ as John puts it, and do it in a classy sort of hall, make it muy romantico. We got flowers from the Mission De Flores (who have sadly joined the ghost ranks of SF small businesses past), one of which made it to the cover, the champagne and fine wines flowed, and I like to think we helped San Francisco get a little luckier that night. There’s flower petals all over the mix here; Roy’s sax slinks sultrily, Al is in fine form, adding the occasional barb on the stem, sounding well oiled and comfortably bantering between tunes, and Justin Nijssen hangs back and window-dresses the whole thing with some well placed guitar and a few backups. These are professionals, need I remind you, hard workin’ road dogs with deep thoughts that inspire deep respect, and they put some dancing sweat on all the hits from Jumping The Shark as well as “Candy May” from Forced Witness, which at the time wasn’t yet out. We couldn’t be prouder of our final Live In SF disc, and it’s out on Castle Face Records in partnership with Secretly Canadian.” – Matt Jones.

Alex Cameron’s newest and most musically expansive LP, the glistening Miami Memory, takes a surprising turn. Cameron’s flair for narrative and character are still on full display; yet Miami Memory’s most frequent narrator is, for the first time, Cameron himself—singing with stunning candor of his three-year relationship with his girlfriend.

“When you listen to these songs, and you’re waiting for the twist, or the joke, or any kind of discomfort, I can assure you none of those things were there when I wrote them,” says Cameron. “These are true stories, of actual events. Specific but never esoteric. And graphic but never offensive. Miami Memory is the story of a couple balancing sex with contemporary family values...It’s my gift to my girlfriend, a symbol to hoist on the totem of love.”

Though remnants of his synth-driven earlier work sneak in to unsettle the tone, the bulk of Miami Memory, produced by Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Father John Misty) and recorded and mixed by Marta Salogni (Björk, Kelela), revels in the emotional overdrive of classic dad rock, its warm, anthemic songs driven by bass, guitar, sax, and layers of Vegas wedding chapel-ish organ.

Cameron’s dad rock funhouse of an album ultimately twists and subverts the genre: it recalls classics the white male ego has historically visited for its regular adrenaline injection, and morphs them into a singular “stepdad” rock that largely turns its lens away from the dads, celebrating the demise of old norms of gender and power. In his depiction of his relationship, Cameron reveals a striking honesty about love and sex in a time where a palpable fleetingness hangs over everything from relationships to human life on this planet—but also where constricting mores have deteriorated enough to let “family life,” in all its morphing forms, exist outside of social obligation. With arresting straightforwardness, Cameron now sings as himself, paying tribute

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Huge stadium-rock choruses and growling synths provide a glitzy and sturdy backdrop for Cameron's soaring vocals and robust 80's-tinged pomp. Huge, overblown, and great fun all round.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Stepdad
2. Miami Memory
3. Far From Born Again
4. Gaslight
5. Bad For The Boy

SIDE B:
6. End Is Nigh
7. PC With Me
8. Divorce
9. Other Ladies
10. Too Far

Alex Cameron has always been a great storyteller, finding his ways into the depths of the places where not many others are looking, and Oxy Music continues on that trajectory. It’s filled with stories of people who fall outside the system and exist in the grey areas of life. And much like 2017’s Forced Witness, Oxy Music is a work of fiction. In its design - its music, lyrics and tracklist - lies the journey a person can take, if the circumstances present themselves - down the road of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s Cherry, Cameron was spurred into yet another commentary on American Life, this time about the opioid crisis that has taken over the country. Alex says about Oxy Music: “The album is a story, a work of fiction, mostly from the perspective of a man. Starved of meaningful purpose, confused about the state of the world, and in dire need of a reason to live - a person can, and according to the latest statistics, increasingly will, turn to opioids. This is one of those people.”

While Oxy Music could be dark, it’s instead brighter and more buoyant than much of Cameron’s previous work, a shift in mood first seen across 2019’s Miami Memory. It’s told from a place of optimism and through the lens of Cameron, in the way that only he can tell it.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A:
1. Best Life
2. Sara Jo
3. Prescription Refill
4. Hold The Line
5. Breakdown

SIDE B:
6. K Hole
7. Dead Eyes
8. Cancel Culture (feat. Lloyd Vines)
9. Oky Music (feat. Jason Williamson)

Soundway reissues the vocal and instrumental versions of 'If I Love You', from GC Cameron, the lead singer of the legendary soul group The Spinners, the 12" EP also includes two unreleased recordings from the same session - 'Live for Love' and 'Thank You Baby'.

Hailing from McCall Creek, Mississippi, G.C. Cameron rose to fame at 22 years of age, when he joined Motown Records to become lead singer of legendary group The Spinners. After a string of well received releases, including chartbusterIt's A Shame, co-written and produced by Stevie Wonder, Cameron left The Spinners to pursue a solo career.

It was a trip to Fantasy Studios, San Francisco in 1977, where Cameron teamed up with Harvey Faqua, Greg Crockett and Elgie Stover to realise what is arguably his finest work. A full album was recorded, but only two tracks saw the light of day, via the short-lived UK label, Flamingo.

Soundway presents a four track EP, comprised of the two in- demand cuts previously released on Flamingo - the deep and dubby disco-workout If I Love You (Instrumental) and soul drenched ballad Live For Love, coupled with two unreleased recordings rescued from the abyss after 45 years of collecting dust. The modern- soul- dancer Thank You Baby, backed by Jeanie Tracy and Martha Walsh, is a jewel that displays Cameron's full range whilst the vocal to If I Love You elevates the recording to dance- floor- ready and joins the dots that never existed.

TRACK LISTING

A1. If I Love You
A2. If I Love You (Instrumental)
B1. Thank You Baby
B2. Live For Love